On the 19th and 20th of February 2015, the Global Europe Centre at the University of Kent organised a workshop titled ‘Testing the boundaries of EU actorness in the Eastern Partnership: Mutual perceptions and influences’. The event consisted of a key note lecture and a full-day workshop. The key note lecture was delivered by Professor Richard Youngs (Carnegie Europe and University of Warwick), who provided a fascinating insight into the development of relations between the EU and Eastern Partnership countries since the crisis in Ukraine.
The main part of the event was an interdisciplinary workshop on the following day, and included ten doctoral students and established scholars from across the UK and wider Europe. The presentations focused on the mutual perceptions and influences upon identity, and wider interaction between the European Union and the Eastern Partnership, including: mobility and people-to-people contact, negotiations, the role of formal education, the ‘marketisation’ of images of Europe, and the networked approach to reform implementation.
