Dr Andriy TYUSHKA, Senior Research Fellow in the European Neighbourhood Policy Chair at the College of Europe in Natolin, just co-authored a book chapter on ‘critical expectation gaps’ and EU-Ukraine relations in the post-Euromaidan perceptions of Ukrainian political elites.
The chapter appeared in the edited volume titled ‘Reconfiguring EU Peripheries: Political Elites, Contestation, and Geopolitical Shifts’, published with Helsinki University Press (HUP). Drawing primarily on political elite interviews, this chapter enquires into Ukrainian parliamentarians’ discourse and framings of EU–Ukraine integration dynamics over the past three decades and their joint response to the continued Russian war of aggression since 2014, as well as the handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Analytically framed using the ‘critical expectation gaps’ approach, this study explores how wide or narrow the perceived gap is between Ukrainian political elites’ hopes and expectations of EU engagement and the actual dynamics of the EU’s performance – and why. To determine whether and how the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 has impacted strategically critical issues (Ukraine’s EU accession and defence against Russian aggression) and Ukraine’s hopes and expectations of the EU’s performance, this research also incorporates insights from Ukraine’s official discourse and relevant scholarly analyses.
The publication can be consulted here.
Please note that the views expressed in this publication are those of the author, and do not represent the official position of the College of Europe.