The External Images of the EU and their Effects: Analysing Russian Political Discourse

The European Union sees itself as a global player whose mission is to promote such values as democracy, liberty, rule of law and respect for human rights. But to achieve its aim the EU should take into consideration what the world thinks about it. This paper purports to analyse the perceptions and expectations of the EU held by Russian decision-makers. This project therefore aims to investigate ideational representations of the EU in order to reveal if the EU’s self-proclaimed values and principles coincide with its images that prevail in Russian political discourse, and to answer the question if Russia perceives the EU as an altruistic advocate of universal norms or as an entity that seeks to impose its rules under the pretext of promoting multilateralism. Secondly, the paper intends to find out if the images of the EU, whatever they are, are of any effect. In this research an attempt will be made to get an empirical confirmation of the theoretical presuppositions that external images not only contribute to shape the EU’s and Russia’s identity, but also that they may be useful in investigating the effectiveness of the EU policies and explaining why Russia accepts or rejects the EU stance in a selected areas such as foreign and security area, human rights, migration, and energy policy. The focus of this paper is on the Russian governmental discourse that includes publicly accessible documents concerning the EU – Russian relations, press statements, public speeches and declarations of high-ranking politicians, some of which have not been translated into English. This empirical project is of a multidisciplinary nature and combines the tenets of the international relations, European studies and discourse analysis.