Shaping the Post-Soviet Space?: EU Policies and Approaches to Region-Building

While the European Union (EU) is widely perceived as a model for regional integration, the encouragement of regional co-operation also ranks high among its foreign policy priorities.Drawing on a wealth of sources and extensive fieldwork conducted in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Laure Delcour questions the pursuit of this external objective and the existence of an EU regional vision in the post-Soviet area and asks does the compartmentalization of EU policies correspond to a growing fragmentation of the former Soviet Union that cannot be considered as a region anymore? Does it rather reflect the EU's own interests in the area?Interested in exposing why the EU has not pursued a strategy of 'region-building' in the post-Soviet area, Delcour examines the disintegration dynamics affecting the area following the collapse of the USSR and takes a closer look at the strategic partnership with Russia, European Neighbourhood Policy, and Black Sea Synergy as a capability test for the European foreign policy to promote its foreign policy priorities and to raise a distinctive profile in the international arena.