Natolin Senior Research Fellow Dr Andriy TYUSHKA published his research paper: “Engagement, Enlargement and Estrangement: EU Democracy Promotion and Protection in its Eastern Neighbourhood in-between Three Relational Paradigms”

Dr Andriy TYUSHKA, Senior Research Fellow in the European Neighbourhood Chair at the College of Europe in Natolin, has just published a research paper titled “Engagement, Enlargement and Estrangement: EU Democracy Promotion and Protection in its Eastern Neighbourhood in-between Three Relational Paradigms”. 

Part of Horizon Europe REUNIR project publication series, this paper adopts a ‘relational IR’ perspective on the EU’s both success and struggle in advancing democratization/counter-autocratization agenda beyond its borders. 

The EU’s democracy promotion defines much of the Union’s engagement with its Eastern neighbourhood and further afield. Yet the democratization progress among the EU’s Eastern neighbours has proven to be uneven and, in some cases, even reversible. Russia’s all-out military invasion of Ukraine has only further exacerbated domestic and regional politics in Eastern Europe, making democratic reform stand second to security considerations and, thereby, opening space for a renewed push of autocratization. 

Against the backdrop of this critical juncture and the related arguable change in the EU’s policy from promoting to protecting democracy in its Eastern neighbourhood, this paper enquires into the established and emerging practices of the EU’s differentiated democracy support, focusing on three discernible foreign-political ‘relationalities’: enlargement, engagement and estrangement (3Es). 

The publication can be accessed here.