Research Paper in the Lecture “European Foreign Policy” at École de Management Strasbourg
Authors:
Valentin Fercho, Kevin Cross, Ovcharova Yana, Azat Kamagazynov
Content 1. Introduction 3 2. EU-Russia Relations 3 2.1 Determinants of the EU-Russia Relations 3 2.1.1 Political determinants 3 2.1.2 Economic determinants 5 2.2 Implications for future EU-Russia relations and the EU's Foreign Policy 6 Conclusion 7 Sources 8
1. Introduction
The relations between the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation have seen some turbulent times during the last years, ranging from the Russia–Georgia war in 2008 to the Russia–Ukraine gas dispute which also affected some EU countries.
This paper will briefly present the current state of EU-Russia relations, analyze the respective political and economic determinants of the bilateral relations and assess their impact on future EU-Russia relations and the EU's Foreign Policy.
2. EU-Russia Relations
2.1 Determinants of the EU-Russia Relations
2.1.1 Political determinants
In the past, political relations between the European Union and the Russian Federation have been, for a lack of better words, tense. Albeit this fact, the political relations between the two have considerably increased since the true acknowledgement of the European Union in 1993 (but the origin of the European Union can be dated back as far as 1945 when the European Coal and Steel Industries first started to peacefully congregate between France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Belgium, and The Netherlands). Additionally, when the Soviet Union disbanded and became Russia in the early 1990’s, political unrest seemed to disband as well, and public relations with other countries improved drastically.
European Union and the Russian Federations relations slowly kept building and improving until the European Union started inducting many Eastern European countries which