The Struggle for Good Governance in Eastern Europe

Abstract:

This volume forms part of a wider project on the European Union’s Association Agreements (AAs) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. These agreements serve as the cornerstone of the EU’s ambitious strategy to help anchor these three states into what they themselves call their “European choice”. They are comprehensive in scope and content, with an equal weight attached to both political and economic aspects. This broad landscape of issues has been analysed systematically in three Handbooks, now appearing in their second editions.1 The present volume picks up on the key political aspects in greater depth, and does so with a comparative approach taking all three cases together. The task has been to go through the critical determinants of, and obstacles hindering ‘good governance’, including constitutional aspects and hazards for the process such as the oligarchs, pervasive corruption and the unique geo-political situation in which the three states find themselves in between the EU and Russia. As with the three ‘Handbooks’, this present volume was produced by research teams from four independent think tanks, CEPS in Brussels, Reformatics in Tbilisi, Expert-Grup in Chisinau and the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting in Kyiv. While much of the content of the Handbook is undoubtedly rather dry, we hope that the reader will appreciate the lighter touch in the artwork of Constantin Sunnerberg, which graces the introductory page of each chapter.