Almost two years after the crisis in Ukraine exploded on the EU's border, the future of the Union's Neighbourhood policy remains unclear. On the positive side, alongside a strategic review of the ENP and the EU's foreign policy more broadly, there have been many genuine attempts to refocus and make better use of the existing instruments, not only in Ukraine but in all six Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries. The track record is mixed, however, and there are no unqualified successes, even among the countries that used to be seen as frontrunners.
This paper looks at the factors that lie behind both the successes and the failures of the EU in its eastern neighbourhood, by exploring the variation in scope conditions - domestic incentives, degrees of (limited) statehood, democracy vs autocracy, power (a)symmetries - across the EaP countries.
