Knowledge of Russia and its political dynamics is essential for understanding European foreign policy. After the enlargement of the European Union (2004), two powers that form a European political and cultural framework and which are fated to understanding each other in order to guarantee their own consolidation seem to find each other in their own geographic spaces. However, the political itineraries and the ambitions of Russia and the European Union often present opposing positions, which makes the relationship between them complex, albeit necessary. In its eastern neighbour, the EU has a guarantor of its stability and a valuable trading partner, but, in order to guarantee positive relations, both giants must maintain an intense cooperation and agree upon limits on the regional influences they exert. In this way, they avoid geographic and political overlapping, but at the same time, a competition is created which is not exempt from tensions that often lead to difficulty in understanding and that in the future could generate conflicts. In any case, today Russia and the European Union share not only a rich political and economic interaction, but also processes of political cohesion that promise new and interesting frameworks of cooperation or of tension in the near future, in which no scenario can be discounted and which will make up the European and international panorama of the 21st century.

Francesc Serra is a Lecturer in International Relations and European International Policy at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). He is a member of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy at the University Institute of European Studies and a Lecturer at the CIDOB Foundation.

ISBN: 978-84-87072-51-2

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