| Abstract [eng] |
EU enlargement increasingly becomes the process that is not finally aimed at fully-fledged membership of the EU, which is preconditioned by the EU enlargement fatigue. The EU now tends to offer an alternative to its membership, first and foremost, the possibility of participation in the EU internal market (through FTAs). Such proposals by the EU may be referred to as integration without membership models. The European Neighbourhood Policy is a practical example of that policy. Among other things, the Thesis aims to identify cause-effect links that determine the logic of the functioning of the integration without membership models that the EU offers to its partners thus to conceptualise the impact of the internal European integration effects on third countries with no EU membership prospects. Another important goal pursued is to fill the theory vacuum in the area of relations between the EU and the third countries which are not interested in fully-fledged EU membership where the EU cannot apply the principle of conditionality. When the vacuum has been filled, the arsenal of theories dealing with the EU as an international actor should grow and might suggest a theoretical model capable of expanding the analysis of the EU international identity outside the boarders of Europeanisation studies. The analysis of EU’s relations with Russia and Ukraine has been targeted at the illustration of different alternatives of EU behaviour in its external relations (variety or lack of EU’s power of impact) under different conditions: a) vis-à-vis its partner country in respect to which the EU can apply the principle of conditionality and b) vis-à-vis the state that shapes an alternative EU integration area itself. The two case studies will answer the questions under what conditions one or another integrated EU policy sector creates a possibility for the Community to impose its rules outside the EU institutional boarders and when the EU internal integration becomes a barrier in spreading European rules. |
