EU's involvement in its Eastern neighbourhood : About the influence the EU has on the Transnistrian conflict
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2013-08-14
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en
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Transnistria is a reasonable unknown and questionable region on the borderland of the European
Union. Officially this region is part of the Republic of Moldova, but after an armed conflict in 1992
this region declared itself an independent state. However, it has not been recognized by any other
country in the world. Because its status remains entirely unclear it seems like illegal activities have
a free rein which resulted in Transnistria being accused of various crimes such as smuggling,
money laundering and weapons trafficking (Sanchez, 2009). For the EU, this is an interesting and
important issue as Moldova is a neighbouring country and is taken into account in the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). This EU-policy was created in 2004 after the EU-enlargement and
because this changed the external borders of the EU drastically, the European Commission felt it
was necessary to have a policy that was focussed primarily on external relations with
neighbouring countries. The objective of the ENP is as follows; ‘avoiding the emergence of new
dividing lines between the enlarged EU and our neighbours and instead strengthening the
prosperity, stability and security of all’ (website ENP, 2013). It seems like the ENP is an ideal
framework for the EU to intervene with in Moldova where the Transnistria-conflict is still rolling
on.
To be able to get hold on the ENP it will be approached with the postcolonial theory. But first, it is
important to get to know more about Eastern Europe, as this will be approached with the concept
of orientalism. Eastern Europe is seen by the EU as an ‘other’, which is highly influenced by the
historical background that Eastern Europe was part of the former Soviet Union. Because ‘we’ (the
EU), saw the Soviet Union as an enemy during the Cold War, it was very hard to have a positive
image of the former Soviet Republics, such as Moldova, after the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991.
As these former Soviet Republics were eager to transform into democratic states with a capitalist
economic system, the EU started to dominate, restructure and have authority over this eastern
orient. As a result of this, the EU enlarged eastwards with the admission of ten eastern European
countries as EU-member states in 2004. After that, the ENP came into force. As this policy is
approached with the postcolonial theory, which has many different contexts, it is necessary to
explain that in this thesis postcolonialism stands for extending ones political, economic and
cultural power over an ‘other’. As regards to postcolonialism, it is interesting to see if and how the
EU is making these Eastern European countries postcolonial by extending its political, economic
and cultural ‘power’ over them with the use of the ENP framework.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen