Integration or Imitation? EU Policy towards its Eastern Neighbours
However, these considerations extend beyond current events and the EU calendar. There are aspects of the central question, namely: Is the EU capable of exporting its own model of governance? This question is currently more focused on the local than the global potential of the European Union. Can it continue the process of „making Europe wider‟?
This text formulates the thesis that Eastern Europe’s (EE) convergence to EU standards in political and economic terms is an enormous challenge, which requires great determination from both sides. Meanwhile, actions taken by the EU so far prove that it does not see integration with its Eastern neighbors as an issue important enough to warrant investing significant resources in this process. At the same time, however, the EU - in part to maintain its credibility or possibly due to political and bureaucratic inertia – is unlikely to relinquish its policy of promoting its own model within its immediate neighborhood. A continuation of this dual strategy may lead to a pretense in which both the EU and its Eastern partners will be merely imitating an integration. Both sides will in fact be playing this game without focusing on achieving the goal and without any hope of implementing it; Brussels in order to avoid an evident failure and cover up its weakness, and Eastern European countries in order to exploit this process for domestic political reasons and in relations with Russia.
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Integration or Imitation? EU Policy towards its Eastern Neighbours
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