On 14 July 2016 EU-STRAT held a workshop discussing the analytical framework for comparing approaches and strategies of selected external actors at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. Participants from four EU-STRAT partner institutions attended the workshop: Ramūnas Vilpišauskas, Dovilė Jakniūnaitė, Laurynas Jonavičius, Margarita Šešelgytė from Vilnius university, Kataryna Wolczuk and Rilka Dragneva-Lewers from the University of Birmingham, Dirk Lehmkuhl from the University of St.Gallen and Valentin Lozovanu from the Institute for Development and Social Initiatives. The aim of the workshop was to explore and discuss the analytical framework for comparing approaches and strategies of the EU and other selected external actors vis-à-vis EaP countries in key sectors, namely energy, trade, security, and migration. Five presentations of scholarship in five areas (Geopolitics/geo-economics, IR approaches; Regionalism and international organizations approaches; Alliance building and regional cooperation/transformative power; Democracy promotion; Political economy of reforms) were discussed during the workshop to provide an overview of existing literature, its gaps and potentially useful insights from the view of the EU-STRAT project. The workshop participants also took decisions regarding the sectoral scope of the analysis, the target countries, the time frame and the external players and their composition.
The workshop was part of EU-STRAT’s Work Package (WP) 4. The overall goal of WP4 is to investigate and assess the policies and strategies of external actors in order to better understand their impact on EaP countries.