Drifting apart or business as usual among allies? External contestation of EU’s engagement in neighbourhood by American political actors

The media headlines were frequented over last four years by the political events indicating growing troubles in transatlantic relations, yet it is unclear to what extend that rift between the US and European partners will be reversed under the new presidency. The populist slogans against free trade, immigration, international agreements and specifically against the EU itself pursued by President Donald Trump were damaging to the mutual relations and have lasting implication to the shared commitments to maintaining liberal global order. The main aim of this paper is to analyse what has been contested in the EU foreign policy by American political actors. In order to do so this analysis focuses on specifically important area of EU’s engagement both for the bloc and for the USA – the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood that interferes with the Russian foreign policy and often leads to tensions between the EU and Russia as the Ukrainian conflict clearly demonstrated. Studying the ally’s contestation of European activities will allow an assessment of the state of transatlantic relations indicating the change in perceived EU’s actorness. The analysis covers contestation by selected actors from the US government and in the US Congress in the period of 2012-2020.