Eastern Partnership and Euronest: What Drives Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation in the Eastern Partnership?

Overwhelming majority of studies of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) are devoted to the analysis of bilateral relations between the EU and members of the EaP. The studies of the EaP institutions remain clearly under-researched. At the same time, the attempts undertaken to analyse Eastern Partnership institutions are largely descriptive in nature. In the present paper we aim to overstep this descriptive tradition and formulate analytical conclusions on one of the EaP institutions, namely Euronest. The question guiding the study aims to reveal the drivers for the development of regional inter-parliamentary cooperation. We analyse the driving forces of the Euronest from the three theoretical perspectives: institutionalization, socialization and parliamentary diplomacy. Since all three approaches seem relevant for explaining the development of Euronest, we consecutively apply each of them based on the empirical information. The data for the study comes from ten semi-structured interviews with the parliamentarians from both European and EaP components and members of the secretariat of the European Parliament to Euronest, as well as participants' observation (Euronest third ordinary meeting, Brussels, 2014) and documentation analysis. The analysis demonstrates that participants from the European and EaP components prioritize differently the objectives of Euronest, which has the direct impact on its driving forces. While the European Parliament stresses the importance of socialization, the EaP delegates are more inclined to see Euronest as a platform of interparliamentary diplomacy. A certain degree of steering is identified in the work of the EP secretariat. The informal policy-making was concluded to have almost equal importance with formal procedures, leading to foreign policy decisions which potentially might shape Eastern Partnership policy.