Special issue on EU-Central Asian interactions, Central Asia Survey, Vol. 41, No, 4, December 2022

The new special issue ‘EU-Central Asian Interactions: Perceptions, Interests and Practices’, co-edited by the former director of MECACS Rick Fawn, together with Karolina Kluczewska and Oleg Korneev, has just been published in Central Asian Survey.

From limited interactions in the early 1990s, the EU and Central Asia now consider each other to be increasingly important.

The contributions to this issue investigate perceptions that these actors hold of each other, including the processes and outcomes of interpreting each other’s intensions and actions. They also zoom in at an interplay of normative and financial interests in how these actors interact. Finally, the articles analyse practices of cooperation, pointing to the EU and Central Asia’s unique rationales and modes of behaviour in the international arena.

This special issue shows why and in what ways exactly the EU and Central Asia matter to each other – and also why researchers should pay more attention to their interactions. Central Asia falls under the broader external relations and security agenda of the EU, and over years it provided a testing ground for many EU policies, including the priority ones of region-building and resilience promotion. Looking at the EU, in turn, informs as to how Central Asian actors interact with external partners of the region, and how they influence national policy agendas and consequently everyday life – bringing new approaches, insights and evidence also to the wide field of EU studies.

Find out more: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccas20/41/4