Online ISSN 2286-0266
Print ISSN 1223-0685
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Ştefan Marian DUMITRU
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti
The purpose of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the ever-increasing incorporation of the geopolitical dimension in one of the EU’s most important foreign policies – the Eastern Partnership of the Neighbourhood Policy. 2019 marks a decade since the launch of the initiative. During these ten years, numerous events have marked and changed how the EU approaches its neighbours in the East. While considerable measures and resources have been utilized to bring closer the EU's eastern neighbours, events evolved in both expected and unexpected ways, along the years. In this paper, we will evaluate the effects of such events -- Arab Spring, the conflict in Ukraine, the re-emergence of Russia as a regional player with global ambitions, etc. We will also determine how these events moved the European Union to gradually reassess the ENP and the Eastern Partnership, in utilizing a more strategic geopolitical way of thinking and acting. While the increase in popularity of geopolitical considerations might point to a dramatic shift to the EU's behaviour towards the Eastern Partnerships, we found that the hybrid nature of the EU has spilled over into its take on geopolitics, giving it a small dose of authenticity.

ŒCONOMICA no. 2/2019
Keywords: European Union, neighbourhood, policy, Eastern Partnership, geoeconomics, geopolitics
JEL: N44, O52
The European Union’s Eastern Neighbourhood and the Incorporation of the Geopolitical Dimension