Abstract
The articles in this special issue offer important conceptual and empirical observations on some of the key issues
conflict management, internal security governance including migration and border controls, energy security and the regulatory aspects of trade in energy products
which are often seen as presenting substantial, if not insuperable, barriers to progress in relations between the EU and Russia. The opening article, by Laure Delcour, examines the EU’s putative role as a security provider in its Eastern neighbourhood with a particular focus on conflict resolution, control of migration flows and good governance. Her conclusions are, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the EU lacks coherence in implementing its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). But the reasons for the EU’s failings lie less in the lack of military capacity and appetite for dealing with issues of ‘hard’ security than in apprehension over Moscow’s reaction to external interference in its ‘former backyard’, as well as in the problem of dealing with specific security problems among the regions’ states while developing a regional strategy to serve its own security interests. The Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative provides some hope that Brussels may be attempting a genuine regional strategy which might in the future allow it to play a more substantive security role in the troubled neighbourhood. Nevertheless, relations with Russia remain central to progress in this area.
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