The role of the models of strategic partnership in the new world order. Euro-russian relations and the eurasian economic union in strategic perspective

Resum

Before the conflict in Ukraine, the EU-Russian relationship was developing in the format of a Strategic Partnership, and Russia was in fact already considered to be one of the EU’s ten strategic partners. However, the main problem of this emerging concept of European Union Foreign Policy was that there was neither an official definition of strategic partnership nor any common criteria for being chosen as a strategic partner. It is worth mentioning that before the crisis in Ukraine, Russia had not only developed a sense of integration with the European Union but had also promoted the same idea with regard to post-Soviet land space, and as a result the Eurasian Economic Union was created. Thus, when discussing EU-Russian relations we should take into account the new Actor on the international arena, the Eurasian Economic Union. The present doctoral thesis, composed of three independent chapters, represents a kind of trilogy where each segment has a life of its own consisting of a specific object of research, specific objectives, hypothesis, methodology and conclusions. However, they are united by the same goal of elaborating a conceptual model of strategic partners’ election to the EU, and on the basis of this model and Gravity Models to prove the rationality of establishment of a strategic partnership between the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union from the economic, political, social, and cultural points of view. The first chapter aims at analyzing the phenomenon of strategic partnership together with the EU’s concept of strategic partnership, to offer a comprehensive definition of the term ‘strategic partnership’, to suggest key factors affecting the election of the EU’s strategic partners; and on the basis of principals components obtained in this research to construct a Binary Logistic Model of Strategic Partners Election for the EU. In order to compare the results obtained by this model the research has been completed by the addition the following techniques: synthetic index and cluster analysis. The second chapter aims at analysing if the strategic partnership between the EU and Russia failed in 2014, together with other factors, such as parties’ GDPs per capita, distance between them, devaluation of Russian currency, sanctions and oil prices have had an impact on their bilateral trade. This investigation was carried out by applying the Gravity Model. The third chapter aims at researching the new Eurasian project on the post - Soviet space - the Eurasian Economic Union - with a view to propose a strategic partnership with the EU. Applying the technique of the Gravity Model, we discovered not only which factors influence foreign trade cooperation with various integration blocks but also analysed those groups of countries aimed at deciding which partners the Eurasian Economic Union should develop strategic partnerships with. Finally we provide a series of conclusions obtained from the three chapters on the basis of empirical analysis where we justify the necessity for establishing a strategic partnership between the European and Eurasians Economic Unions. Furthermore, in accordance with these conclusions a range of limitations and future lines of research has been highlighted.