Introduction

When the long-projected enlargement of the European Union (EU) finally took place on 1 May 2004, the Western Newly Independent States (WNIS), as the European Commission calls the former Soviet states of Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, became the EU's new eastern neighbourhood. Although they had no prospect of acceding to the EU in the foreseeable future, they were perceived as ‘the EU's essential partners’. Indeed, the attainment of security, stability and sustainable development within the Union was deemed to require political reform, social cohesion and economic dynamism outside it, in particular in the EU's new eastern neighbourhood. The European Commission proposed a European Neighbourhood programme to promote a set of values ‘within the fields of the rule of law, good governance, the respect for human rights, including minority rights, the promotion of good neighbourly relations, and the principles of market economy and sustainable development’.

Russians were appalled that the EU's new neighbourhood plans appeared to put Russia in the same category not only as Belarus and Moldova, but also as the states of North Africa. Russia was duly left out of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP); instead the EU and Russia decided to develop their strategic partnership through the creation of four common spaces. However, the EU-Russian strategic partnership was already experiencing considerable strain by this time. Following the December 2003 parliamentary election, the Duma was dominated by the pro-presidential United Russia party, with little or no representation of those parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, which had previously been the most enthusiastic supporters of relations with the EU and of a ‘European perspective’ more generally.