THE JEAN MONNET CHAIR FOR EUROPEAN POLITICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PASSAU ORGANISED THE PANEL “CHANGING PERCEPTIONS IN EU-EEU RELATIONS: A DRIVER FOR CHANGING FOREIGN AND DEFENCE POLICY” WITH PAPER PRESENTATIONS FROM DIFFERENT EUCON PARTNERS.
The EUCON panel aimed at analysing the external perception and the self-perception of European Union (EU) and Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) member states with regard to their mutual relations. Are these perceptions changing since February 2022? Based on this analysis the main research question was to what extend different self-perceptions as an international actor or different perceptions of the partner/opponent lead to controversy in foreign and defence policy (on the internal level) or in external relations between the EU and the EEU (on the international level).
Florence Ertel and Julian Plottka from the University of Passau analysed in their paper whether the so-called “Zeitenwende” in European defence policy started with the Russian attack against Ukraine in February 2022 or whether it can be considered a long-term development. As the Russian aggression is also affecting the EU’s relations with most states in the post-Soviet region, they did not exclusively focus on EU-Russia relations, but presented an analysis of the EU’s relations with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and its member states.
From the perspective of political risk analysis, Hannes Meissner of the University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna presented an analysis of the perception of political risks deriving from the Ukraine war and changing EU-EEU relations among managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Furthermore, he addressed the strategic short-, mid-, and long-term management responses of MNEs to the changing geopolitical environment in Ukraine. In his analysis, he drawed on ten qualitative interviews with managers of MNEs of varying sizes, and industries conducted in pre-war Ukraine in October 2021.
Daniel Göler from the University of Passau discussed whether a norm-based foreign policy can turn into a geostrategic challenge. He explained the terms “civil power” and “normative power”, which conceptualise a foreign policy oriented towards norms and values. From this theoretical perspective, he traced backed the relations between the EU and Ukraine up to 2014 to discuss the research question. He clearly showed that Russia perceives the EU’s policy towards Ukraine as a geopolitical challenge.
Photo: Florence Ertel, Julian Plottka, Daniel Göler and Hannes Meissner