On 14 September 2022, Dr. Anne Pintsch and Dr. Maryna Rabinovych presented their book chapter “EU External Differentiated Integration and Compliance: Theoretical and Legal Aspects”, which is part of the Routledge Handbook of Differentiated Integration, edited by Benjamin Leruth, Stefan Gänzle and Jarle Trondal. The book launch took place at the premises of CEPS – a leading Brussels-based think tank on EU affairs and one of Europe’s top think tanks.
Following the book’s presentation by the co-editors and the book chapter presentations, panelists discussed the future of EU differentiated integration, especially in the foreign and security domains, amid the continuing Russia’s war against Ukraine.
UACES logo, available from https://uacesoneurope.ideasoneurope.eu/
Between 5th and 9th September Project Leader Anne Pintsch and Project Post-Doc Maryna Rabinovych participated in the 52nd Annual Conference, organized by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, which took place in Lille (France).
Dr. Pintsch and Dr. Rabinovych were part of the panel “The EU and Ukraine” with a co-authored draft paper, titled “Revisiting Compliance Negotiations: The EU-Ukraine Association Relations”. Other panel presenters involved Dr. Gergana Noutcheva and Dr. Kateryna Zarembo with the paper “Normative Power at its Unlikeliest: EU Norms, Soviet Legacy and Security Sector Reform in Ukraine” and Dr. Jan Niklas Rolf who presented the work “From Asymmetric to Symmetric Conflict: An Events Data Analysis of the International Response to the Conflict of Ukraine (focusing on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine in 2014-2016, rather than the current war).
Dr. Rabinovych also took part in the UACES non-traditional panel “European Institutional Leadership: Which Integration for Greater Europe”, chaired by Philippe Lefevre (think tank “Institute for Greater Europe”.
These days, the Department of Political Science and Management at the UiA hosts Dr. Iryna Fyshchuk, whose research interests lie at the crossroads between public administration and digitalization. Prior to Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, Iryna was part of the Department of Parliamentarism at Educational and Scientific Institute of Public Administration and Civil Service of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
For the time being, Iryna works on a third-party funding application to develop her research on digitalization at Ukrainian local communities. We wish much success!
From 30 June to 07 July 2022, Director of Security Programmes at the “Lowering the Bar” project’s partner organization Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism” Dr. Hanna Shelest had been at the UiA for a research stay. The research part of the stay was dedicated to exploring ways to enhance security cooperation and integration between the EU and Ukraine amid the war and following its end. Upon completion, the results of the research will be published with an international peer-reviewed journal. During her stay, Dr. Hanna Shelest also taught a session titled “Ukraine and Europe: Between Politics and Security” at the European Integration Summer School (EISS). We thank Hanna for the visit and are looking forward to further cooperation.
Hanna Shelest (PhD) is the Editor-in-chief of UA: Ukraine Analytica, Head of the Security Programmes at the Foreign Policy Council “Ukrainian Prism”. She previously served as a Senior Researcher at the Odesa branch of the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a Visiting Research Fellow at the NATO Defence College (Italy). She has a PhD in International Relations, specializing in conflict resolution and security issues. Dr Shelest was an adviser of the Working Group preparing the Ukrainian Navy Strategy 2035 and was involved in working groups developing the Foreign Policy Strategy of Ukraine, Asian Strategy for MFA, and Ukraine’s NATO Public Communication Strategy. She led different policy-related projects, among others: Scorecards of the Ukrainian Foreign Policy (2015-2021); Ukraine-NATO: Enhanced Level (2021-2022); The Hybrid War Decade: Lessons Learned to Move Forward Successfully (2019). Dr Shelest is a Rotary Peace Fellow (2010), John Smith Fellow (2012), Marshall Memorial Fellow (2016), and Visegrad Think Fellow (2019).
The blog entry narrates the history of independent Ukraine as a story of societal mobilization and pro-European choices. Particular attention is paid to the 2013 Euromaidan Revolution and the signing and implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement as factors, conducive to Ukraine’s resilience in the current war.
On 9 of June 2022, Project Team took part in the Jean Monnet Seminar “Best practices on doing research and teaching in European Studies: Ukrainian and European Perspectives”, organized by the Ukrainian Association of European Studies.
During the seminar, Project Post-Doc Maryna Rabinovych gave the project-based talk “Differentiated Integration and Compliance as Key Research Topics in the Relations between Ukraine and the EU”. The talk focused on the increasing role of differentiated in the EU’s foreign policy and the challenge of enforcing compliance in an increasingly externally differentiated Union.
Row of flagpoles with European Union and Ukraine flags fluttering by wind on blue sky background
On 1-2 June 2022, “Lowering the Bar” Project Leader Dr. Anne Pintsch and Post-Doc Dr. Maryna Rabinovych participated in the Interdisciplinary Trans-Nordic Conference on European Differentiated Integration at the University of Agder (UiA). Conducted under the auspices of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence “Laboratories of Differentiated Integration in the post-Brexit Europe” at the UiA, the conference brought together scholars working on European integration across the Nordic countries from various disciplinary perspectives as well as practitioners. Given Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, the EU’s efforts to redefine its future relations with Eastern Neighbours were actively debated by conference participants.
In terms of the conference, Dr. Anne Pintsch and Dr. Maryna Rabinovych presented two draft co-authored papers, tentatively titled “From the 2014 Annexation of Crimea to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War: Association, Resilience and Socialization in the EU-Ukraine Relations between the Critical Junctures” and “Sustainable Development: A Common Denominator for the EU’s Policy towards the Eastern Partnership?”. The Power point presentations are available below.
In addition to the paper presentations, project leader Anne Pintsch chaired an Ambassadors’ Panel on “The War in Ukraine and European Integration – An Eastern Perspective”. The panel participants included Cristian Bădescu, Ambassador of Romania to Norway; Wolfgang Behrendt, Deputy Head of the European Union Delegation to Norway; Eszter Sándorfi, Ambassador of Hungary to Norway and Iwona Woicka-Żuławska, Ambassador of Poland to Norway.
Ambassadors Panel, 1 June 2022: The war in Ukraine and European integration – An Eastern perspective Participants from left to right: Wolfgang Behrendt, Deputy Head of the European Union Delegation to Norway Cristian Bădescu, Ambassador of Romania to Norway Anne Pintsch, Leader of the “Lowering the Bar?”-project Eszter Sándorfi, Ambassador of Hungary to Norway Iwona Woicka-Żuławska, Ambassador of Poland to Norway
On 26-27 May 2022, “Lowering the Bar” project Post-Doc Dr. Maryna Rabinovych took part at the Peder Sather workshop “Governing Crisis in the European Union” at University of California, Berkeley. Titled “EU Response to Russia’s War Against Ukraine: A Research Agenda”, her presentation took stock of the consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine for the EU and EU-Ukraine relations and presented a research agenda on the EU’s response to war. This research agenda includes, inter alia, new dynamics in the EU’s relations with all associated Eastern Neighbours (Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia), organizational theory perspectives on the EU’s war response, discussion as to the future of the European Neighbourhood Policy and Eastern Partnership, and the war’s implications for intra-EU policies.
Focusing on one or several of these aspects of the research agenda, we will continue working on the chapter for the new edited volume on governing crises in the EU.
On 19-22 May 2022, project post-doc Maryna Rabinovych took part at the 2022 EUSA 17th Biennial Conference in Miami. The European Studies Association is one of the world leading scholarly and professional associations, focusing on the intra-EU integration and EU external relations. This year, Russia’s war against Ukraine and EU’s response to war have been among the key topics of the Conference.
At EUSA, Maryna presented a draft paper, co-authored with project leader Anne Pintsch, with a tentative title “From the 2014 Annexation of Crimea to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War: Association, Resilience and Socialization in the EU-Ukraine Relations between the Critical Junctures“. She also took part in the hybrid launch of the Routledge Handbook of Differentiation in the European Union, co-edited by B. Leruth, S. Gänzle and J. Trondal. Maryna’s and Anne’s contribution to the Handbook focuses on compliance in EU external differentiated integration, e.g. the Schengen Area, the European Economic Area or association relations with Eastern Neighbours. Last but not least, at EUSA Maryna was part of a Special Roundtable on “Russia’s War against Ukraine and Ukraine’s Challenge to Europe” together with Milada Vachudova (University of North Carolina), Stephanie Hofmann (European University Institute), Karolina Pomorska (Leiden University) and Juliet Johnson (McGill University). The Roundtable covered multiple interrelated topics, such as the reasons for and nature of the war, the dynamics of EU-Ukraine relations at the wartime, the effectiveness of EU sanctions against Russia and the war’s implications for global security.
Dr. Anne Pintsch and Dr. Maryna Rabinovych published a book chapter “EU External Differentiated Integration and Compliance: Theoretical and Legal Aspects” with the Routledge Handbook of Differentiation in the European Union, edited by Benjamin Leruth, Stefan Gänzle and Jarle Trondal.
While the volume seeks to offer a nuanced picture of differentiation in the European Union, the book chapter by the Project Team explores compliance in light of external EU differentiation. This phenomenon includes, for instance, the Schengen Area, EU sectoral agreements with Switzerland, the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement and the EU Association Agreements with Eastern Neighbours. As a first step, the chapter introduces theoretical expectations about compliance in the abovementioned cases, referring to the external enforcement, management, domestic pressure and legitimacy approaches. Next, it provides a nuanced overview of legal tools these agreements use to enforce compliance and discusses their relevance in light of compliance theories. It is concluded that fostering compliance under differentiated integration would require strengthening stakeholder engagement and structures for multistakeholder engagement.
