Paper/ Tackling the Constraints on EU Foreign Policy towards Ukraine: From Strategic Denial to Geopolitical Awakening by Kristi Raik, Steven Blockmans, Assem Dandashly, Gergana Noutcheva, Anna Osypchuk and Anton Suslov

EU-Ukraine relations have been overshadowed by tightening geopolitical competition with Russia ever since 2004.

This JOINT Report, by Kristi Raik (International Centre for Defence and Security- ICDS), Steven Blockmans (Centre for European Policy Studies- CEPS), Assem Dandashly, Gergana Noutcheva (Maastricht University), Anna Osypchuk and Anton Suslov (School for Policy Analysis, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy- NaUKMA), discusses EU-Ukraine relations, highlighting that the geopolitical competition with Russia is about two different visions of the European political, economic, and security order.

Ukraine decisively chose the EU orientation. On the other side, the EU was largely in denial about the geopolitical competition until Russia’s full-scale invasion, which pushed the EU to overcome intra-EU contestation, take the side of Ukraine and tackle the conflict as a geopolitical actor in its own right.