The main outcomes of the project “EUEaPRU” are the following:
Article 1 “Tertium Datur: Multi-Attribute Reference Points and Integration Choices between the EU and Eurasian Economic Union”: imports insights from prospect theory into the study of regional integration choices of ruling elites from EaP countries. It introduces the notion of multi-attribute reference points and provides an example of identifying their coordinates, against which ruling elites from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine are expected to consider distinct integration choices: the EU or Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The article finds that ruling elites from EaP countries with the lowest levels of affluence, with medium to high intensity conflicts with Russia and with lower, but still non-trivial costs of domestic transformation have tended to be risk-seeking and opted for the EU as an integration choice. On the other hand, ruling elites from EaP countries with low and medium levels of affluence, with no conflict with Russia and with medium to high costs of domestic transformation have tended to be risk-averse and selected the EAEU as an integration option.
Article 2 “Regional Integration Choices between the EU and Eurasian Economic Union: Explanatory Prospects of Prospect Theory”: explains distinct regional integration choices of governing elites from EaP countries with reference to the variation in their reference level, risk propensities and loss averse inclinations.
Policy Paper “The EU and the Eastern Partnership Countries: How to ‘Lose Weight’ and Incentivise Reforms?”: revisits the “more for more” principle used by the EU in its policy approach towards EaP countries and proposes a revised incentivisation formula for the entire EaP region.
Article 3 “‘One Hand Washes the Other’ in EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood: What Policy Response?”: addresses, potentially, the most formidable problem with which the societies in EaP countries are currently faced: resilience and the reproduction mechanisms of informal institutions.
Article 4 “External Incentives Model and Domestic Transformation Costs”: seeks to contribute to the external incentives model (EIM), proposed by Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier. EIM is a potent theoretical framework for explaining rule adoption by non-EU third countries, including EaP countries. Credibility and the size of external incentives, as well as domestic adjustment costs feature in this model as core explanatory variables. The model outlines compelling scope conditions under which rule transfer can occur in non-EU third countries, but it leaves the cost-related variable and its methodological operationalisation underspecified. The article distinguishes between domestic transformation and adjustment costs, as well as provides a corresponding methodological measurement by the means of fs/QCA.
Dataset: has been constructed as the empirical basis for Article 2 “Regional Integration Choices between the EU and Eurasian Economic Union: Explanatory Prospects of Prospect Theory”. The dataset encompasses 24 variables for all 6 EaP countries and the period 1991-2018 (approximately 4.032 country-year observations).
The results of the project “EUEaPRU” have been communicated and disseminated by the means of: (a) international conferences, (b) invited talks, (c) newspaper interview, (d) teaching and (e) website. The researcher has attended 3 international conferences in the US and UK; gave 3 talks at research institutes within the host institution (EU Foreign Policy Research Group/EIS and Russia Institute, King’s College London) and beyond (St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford).
The interview was provided to “Jurnal de Chișinău”, the main bi-weekly newspaper from Moldova, which is one of the case studies covered by the project.
In order to disseminate selected results of the project to the younger student community, the researcher has convened at EIS, King’s College London, the MA module “Foreign Policies of the EU”. The module is part of the EIS’s MA program in European Studies, consisted of 1x1hr lecture and 2x1hr seminars weekly, and was attended by 37 master students.
The website was a complementary avenue by which the researcher sought to make available the results of the project. It serves as an additional platform on which the main deliverables of the project have been placed.
