2nd EUREN Meeting

The EU's and Russia's Common Neighbourhood: Shared or Contested?

Russia and the EU share a geographic neighbourhood which became an area of contention after the EU's 2004 enlargement. Increasing competition between the EU's neighbourhood policy on the one hand, and Russia's policy of Eurasian integration on the other, escalated over Ukraine in 2014. Three years on, there seems to be no end to this confrontation. The EU is affected by multi-layered internal crises. Russia, on its part, has suffered from enduring economic problems that spread throughout the post-Soviet region because of other countries' dependence on the Russian economy. The economic downturn is also affecting economic integration within the Eurasian Economic Union. The number of unresolved territorial conflicts that scar the region has risen from four to six in 2014. These conflicts have also contributed to the region's fragmentation and instability.