EU-STRAT is an international research project that studies the relationship between the European Union and the countries in the European Eastern neighborhood. The project started on 1 May 2016 and will continue until the end of April 2019.
The main ambition of EU-STRAT is to provide an inside-out analysis and strategic assessment of the links between the EU and Eastern Partnership countries.
EU-STRAT will address two main questions: First, why has the EU fallen short of creating peace, prosperity and stability in its Eastern neighbourhood? And second, what can be done to strengthen the EU’s transformative power in supporting political and economic change in the six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries?
Adopting an inside-out perspective on the challenges of transformation the EaP countries and the EU face, EU-STRAT will:
- Develop a conceptual framework for the varieties of social orders in EaP countries to explain the propensity of domestic actors to engage in change;
- Investigate how bilateral, regional and global interdependencies shape the scope of action and the preferences of domestic actors in the EaP countries;
- De-centre the EU by studying the role of selected member states and other external actors active in the region;
- Evaluate the effectiveness of the Association Agreements and alternative EU instruments, including scientific cooperation, in supporting change in the EaP countries;
- Analyse normative discourses used by the EU and Russia to enhance their influence over the shared neighbourhood;
- Formulate policy recommendations to strengthen the EU’s capacity to support change in the EaP countries by advancing different scenarios for developmental pathways.
The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 693382.
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