The EU Common Foreign and Security Policy Toward Russia: the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement as a Test Case

Lejins, Atis. The EU Common Foreign and Security Policy Toward Russia: the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement as a Test Case. Riga: Latvian Institute of International Affairs, 2006.

The EU Common Foreign and Security Policy, of which a significant element is the EU-Russia dialogue, has a special place in the agenda of a Member of the European Parliament. With the tension surrounding energy supply and its inevitable consequences still clearly etched in everyone's mind, MEPs are about to tackle the serious task of assessing the new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and Russia, currently being drafted by the European Commission, the Member States and Russia. The EU itself is not an entity with policies that are always neatly identifiable, comprised as it is of 25 Member States, each retaining its own national sovereignty. At the same time, Russia is also in the process of defining for itself an identity other than by reference to energy resources, if only for the purposes of international relations. Given the importance of these events, the LIIA researchers and Dr. Andrei Zagorski have prepared their views and assessment of the expected aims and results of the new framework for EU-Russia relations.