A More Geopolitical Eastern Partnership: U-Turn or ‘The Lady’s Not For Turning’?

Summary:

On 18 November 2015, a Joint Communication on the 'Review of the European Neighbourhood Policy' was published by the European Commission and the EU’s High Representative. This is the result of the ambitious consultation process on this Policy launched on March 4, and an important next step in what hopefully will be much-awaited revitalization of the EU’s relations with its neighbours feeding into the European Global Strategy to be published in June 2016.

Building on the Communication, results of the Riga Eastern Partnership summit and other documents, this paper seeks to answer if and what changes have been brought into EU’s relations with Latvia’s priority region in the European Neighbourhood Policy, that is Eastern Neighbours; and in particular, whether we can speak about geopolitics increasingly taking roots in the EU’s policy.