EU and Ukraine Interactions, Agent-structure Relations, and Identity Building

The paper will provide a brief overview of processes of Europeanization and of interactions between the EU, understood here as normative actor and regional structure, and Ukraine, analysed as referent of Europeanization and as agent. Building on Ian Manner’s theorizing on normative power, the paper aims to show that, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, relations and interactions between the EU and Ukraine indicate deep (re)enforcements and transformations in terms of core values, inter-subjective knowledge and norm appropriation. A secondary, yet intertwined, goal is to show how the war against Ukraine also fosters identity building. In this sense, the main argument is that the war does not only trigger rapprochement between the EU and Ukraine, but it also contributes to strengthening the Ukrainian identity and the identity of EU as normative and regional/global actor. This identity strengthening/construction is analysed here in a co-constitutive way, namely in Anthony Gidden’s agent-structure relation. The methodological approach will be a social-constructivist one.