Julia Langbein

Convergence without membership? The impact of the European Union in the neighbourhood: evidence from Ukraine

How does the European Union (EU) affect change in neighbouring countries? The article explores this question, using Ukraine as a case study. So far Ukraine has attracted contradictory assessments of the impact of the EU on the countrys domestic transformation. To explain this puzzle, the process of Ukraines convergence with EU rules is analysed in terms of rule selection, adoption and application. The article focuses on the mechanisms which the EU uses to shape domestic actors’ incentives and capacities for taking on EU rules in each of the three dimensions. In the case of technical regulation, EU mechanisms affect domestic actors differently in the three dimensions, resulting in comprehensive rule selection but only selective rule adoption and application. The process of convergence occurs, but in a non-synchronized and highly idiosyncratic way, thereby indicating the patchy impact of the EU on its neighbours, even in the core economic field.

Introduction: Explaining Policy Change in the European Union's Eastern Neighbourhood

This Introduction discusses the conventional wisdoms dominating the scholarship on policy change in the EUs Eastern neighbourhood countries and summarises the major findings of this collection. Drawing upon the empirical evidence underpinning the contributions to our collection, we argue that compliance with or convergence to EU policies happens despite high costs, limited capacities and the lack of EU membership prospects. We also challenge country-level or policy-type explanations that emphasise membership aspirations, asymmetric interdependencies between the EU and the neighbourhood countries, or the level of politicisation or institutionalisation characterising particular policy fields. Finally, our findings point towards important differences between membership, accession and neighbourhood Europeanisation by stressing factors mediating the EUs impact on policy change in the Eastern neighbourhood countries that played a rather marginal role in domestic policy change in EU member states and accession countries.

Unpacking the Russian and EU Impact on Policy Change in the Eastern Neighbourhood: The Case of Ukraine's Telecommunications and Food Safety

Russia is usually considered as being obstructive to European integration in the EUs Eastern neighbourhood, while the EU is portrayed as being the key promoter of convergence with EU rules. Thus, strong economic dependence on Russia and EU active leverage should account for cross-policy variation in convergence with EU rules. By comparing convergence in Ukraines telecommunications and food safety regulations, I show that active leverage exerted by Western European multinationals rather than by the EU accounts for divergent outcomes. Further, Russias ‘bad guy’ image does not hold if we stop treating Russia as a unitary actor but distinguish between passive and active leverage exerted by Russian government policies, the Russian market and Russian multinationals investing in the Eastern neighbourhood countries on domestic policy choices.

Varieties of dis-embedded liberalism. EU integration strategies in the Eastern peripheries of Europe

ABSTRACT In contrast to the post-1945 integration of Western Europe in the global economic system, coined by John Ruggie as embedded liberalism, the integration of the Eastern peripheries happens in the framework of a new liberal regional settlement. The latter takes large parts of the management of the economy out of the hands of states and compensates the dis-embedding of markets from national control to various degrees. This contribution compares the European Union’s integration approach taken during the Eastern enlargement with the EU approach towards Eastern neighbourhood countries. We argue that the EU has different goals and means for the management of its different peripheries resulting in deep, deep-light and shallow modes of economic integration. We show that differences in political and economic interdependencies between the EU and the two Eastern peripheries explain the variation in integration strategies, and that each of them has its own weaknesses in terms of developmental effects.

(Dis-)integrating Ukraine? Domestic oligarchs, Russia, the EU, and the politics of economic integration

How do the politics of economic integration pursued by the European Union (EU) and Russia in their shared neighborhood affect domestic change in these countries? Do the two external powers further economic integration with one or the other, and how do their strategies shape the survival of rent-seeking domestic elites? Examining the case of Ukraine’s car industry, the paper reveals a considerable degree of disengagement by both the EU and Russia. Both external actors offer domestic elites surprisingly few opportunities for economic integration but rather pursue a “policy” of de facto exclusiveness that caters to the domestic interests of the EU and Russia. So far, the EU has strongly promoted trade liberalization to facilitate market access for European car producers but has not created opportunities for foreign-led restructuring of Ukraine’s car industry, thereby leaving the sector without a chance to benefit from liberalization. Russia, in turn, compromised existing trade linkages with Ukraine to protect its own domestic car industry. What is more, the strategies of both the EU and Russia even provided opportunities for Ukrainian oligarchs with stakes in the domestic car industry, who were not interested in transparent forms of economic interaction in the first place, to pursue rent-seeking strategies that undermined any chance for sustainable development of the industry. While Russia’s disengagement has caused trade disintegration that may have contributed to Ukraine’s reluctance to join Russia-led integration regimes, the EU is well advised to create opportunities for sustainable integration if it does not want to become a factor of further destabilization in Ukraine.