Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU has responded by re-engaging with its neighbours. This builds on the assumption that bringing them into the European family of liberal democracies will increase the resilience of the whole European community against external negative interference. Combining insights from a variety of academic fields, RE-ENGAGE will deliver innovative research and concrete advice on how the EU should adapt its foreign policy tools to the current context. Russia’s war against Ukraine has radically altered European security, not only causing extreme civilian suffering in Ukraine, but posing a direct threat to neighbouring countries fearful of the war spreading. Confronted by the direst security crisis in decades, EU policymakers are forced to fundamentally rethink their security policies. Europe has demonstrated unexpected unity and resolve, adopting a series of sanctions against Russia, and increasing national defence spending to better handle potential military threats. This has also led to a revival of EU enlargement process. While this will not improve EU resilience to military threats in the narrow sense, it may counter hybrid warfare, which is the more likely threat faced by the EU and most of its neighbours. The neighbourhood policy and the accession process require urgent adjustment to build strong, resilient neighbourhood states capable of countering external threats, particularly those posed by hybrid warfare. A systematic investigation of how this can be achieved in the current context without compromising the EU’s values and security is therefore needed. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, there have been increasing calls from the EU for a more context-sensitive approach to its neighbours. RE-ENGAGE will assist the EU in determining how best to achieve this goal through an in-depth study of six cases – three in the Western Balkans and three in the Eastern Neighbourhood.

EMBRACE analyses blockages to democratisation in the European neighbourhood, identifies ways to overcome them and suggests new policy tools for EU democracy promotion (EUDP). EMBRACE takes stock of developments in democracy-building, assessing EUDP instruments, ambitions and concepts. EMBRACE investigates episodes of political deadlock and opening to identify, analyse and explain behavioural, institutional and structural blockages, and the conditions under which they can be overcome. EMBRACE is sensitive to variation in democratisation trajectories, and the cultural, historical, and geopolitical context in which blockages emerge. It also keeps an eye on the blockages from within the EU. EMBRACE surveys the local needs for an improved EUDP and develops new policy tools (e.g. digital platform, EUDP mapping tool, EUDP best-practices collection, policy papers, video clips, podcasts, training webinars) for EUDP practitioners and pro-democracy activists. EMBRACE’s approach to empirical research combines a quantitative large-n with a qualitative middle-n comparative research strategy. Quantitatively, EMBRACE analyses the larger trends of EUDP and its effects on democratisation over the last two decades in all 23 neighbours. Qualitatively, EMBRACE investigates episodes of deadlock and opening from 12 selected countries in Eastern Europe, South Caucasus, Western Balkans, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Intra- and cross-regional comparison is systematically included in EMBRACE’s research design and WP structure. For data collection and analysis, consortium partners located in EU- and in non-EU countries team up. Six stakeholder committees monitor the entire research process assuring that local needs and narratives are considered. In doing so, EMBRACE provides the EU with in-depth knowledge and an innovative policy toolkit enhancing partnerships for a stable and secure European neighbourhood, and incentivising resilient political actors to embrace democratic change.

This project aims the elaboration of the policy of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine on enhancing the third mission of Ukrainian Universities and fostering best practices of cooperation between HEIs and communities based on the application of the relevant experiences of EU states (Italy, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic and Latvia). A set of activities is developed focusing on enhancing universities’ social role and boosting university-community engagement incorporating efficient models of interaction between the communities and universities developed to ensure social cohesion, resilience and sustainability.The project activities include the development of policy options on enhancing the third mission of universities in Ukraine based on actual research of approaches towards governance models of universities’ third missions; in-depth analysis of community and universities needs in Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western Ukraine; capacity-building for Ukrainian HEIs staff through the development of professional exchange program focusing on such important aspects of the community-university cooperation as resilience, sustainability, inclusion, entrepreneurship and environment, public health, and social cohesion, development and piloting of concepts of university-community cooperation at Ukrainian partner HEIs and development a policy paper and roadmap on state policy on enhancing the cooperation between communities and universities.The main project results are: Guidelines for the Ministry of Education on University Third Mission; a research paper “Models of the Community-University Cooperation in Ukraine”, 3 workshops on research methodology, intra-consortium mobilities aiming to study and share the best practices in partner institutions, 3 roundtables and focus groups on the third mission of universities with MESU, Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine, communities and other stakeholders; development and piloting of national models of uni