Russia’s and the European Union’s Relation in the Context of their Foreign Policies Towards Moldova

Abstract

The study “Russia’s and the European Union’s (EU) relations in the context of their foreign policies towards Moldova” is an initial attempt to investigate the convergence of the EU’s and Russia’s foreign energy and security policies towards their common neighbour Moldova. The existing research lacks a comparative perspective on EU-Russia policies towards their common neighbours, and there is a need to fill this gap. To reach the goal of the study, the results of previous research are presented and analyzed. In addition, the concept of convergence is introduced in the conceptual framework of this study, on which the empirical research is based. The case study is used as a main strategy for conducting the study. The thesis covers a period of time from 1991 until 2012. The empirical data is gathered by using document analysis and 7 structured interviews with the experts in energy and security fields. The results of this study suggest that Russia’s and the EU’s policies have both convergence and divergence aspects. Both actors share resembling goals and use some similar instruments, however, the outcomes of their policies are divergent. The limitation of this study includes a notice that it is mainly aimed to describe the most general convergence process on Russia’s and the EU’s policies, and in order to get a more comprehensive view on the resemblance concept between these actors, the further examination of convergence causes is needed.