A Critical Analysis of the European Union’s Central Asia Strategy

Abstract

The Council of the European Union adopted in June 2019 its new EU Strategy on Central Asia. Besides the Eastern Partnership, the Central Asian region is one of the most focused areas of the EU, so determining and shaping the development priorities were of paramount importance. In this study, based on the developments and feedbacks in the recent months, I would like to demonstrate how the weak EU image will be reinforced due to this document and why it is not suitable for reaching the goals of EU, which may not even exist. My hypotheses are: 1) in fact, the EU does not have any clear and real strategy focusing on Central Asia, 2) the EU is losing out on the game of big and middle powers interested in the region, 3) the EU cannot exploit the economic potentials of the region.