The deep crisis in relations between the European Union and the Russian Federation has raised fundamental questions about the EU’s policy towards its eastern neighbours. 2014/15 is likely to come to be seen as a critical juncture in the relations between the EU, the Russian Federation and the countries of the Eastern Partnership.

The discussion will be based on a new report published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung on “Europe and the East in 2030”. The report was based on three workshops in which a group of experts identified the driving forces that shape the relationship and discussed four possible future trajectories for the EU's relationship with its eastern neighbors. We will present the four scenarios and discuss how the EU can make the more positive scenarios more likely and prevent the more negative scenarios from becoming reality.

Presentation of Scenarios

Ireneusz Bil (Poland), Director of the Aleksander Kwaśniewski Foundation Amicus Europae, Warsaw

Hans Kundnani (UK), Research Director, European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Berlin

Florence Mardirossian (France), Co-Founder of Geopole Europe, Paris

Dmytro Ostroushko (Ukraine), Head of International Department of the Gorshenin-Institut, Kyiv

Dmitry Suslov (Russia), Deputy Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Higher School of Economics,  Moscow  

What follows? Policy Implications of the Scenarios for the EU

Barbara Kunz (France), Research fellow, Study Committee on French-German Relations (Cerfa), French Institute of International Relations (Ifri), Paris  

Participation only by invitation