Normative Power Europe, the dominating theoretical approach to the studies of the EU foreign policy, has recently been taken up in a number of studies of the EU’s external perceptions aiming to evaluate whether the EU is in fact seen in the third countries as a normative power. This paper suggests to take a step further and to analyse the perceptions of the EU’s power in the EaP region more in-depth. Beside studying whether the EU is seen as an normative or as economic, political, security, environmental etc., power, the paper will advance Barnett and Duvall’s (2005) taxonomy of power, which differentiates four kinds of power (compulsory, institutional, structural and productive). This will help us to explore whether the EU is seen to act in the EaP region through control, norms promotion and diffusion or identity-building and which kind of power is seen as the most effective. The study will concentrate on the perceptions on the EU (self-perceptions) and local political elites (external perceptions), media analysis and survey of local civil society organizations. The research thus will be based on the analysis of official documents and political speeches, as well as a number of semi-structured interviews and surveys. Such approach will help to bridge the gap between the external perceptions and International Relations/Foreign Policy Analysis literature and contribute to better understanding of a particular aspect – i.e. power - of the EU external action in the EaP region.
