Normative Power, EU Preferences and Russia. Lessons from the Russian-Georgian War

Abstract

The Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008 proves to be a useful case in order to understand the functioning of the EU as a normative power in times of crisis. The core of the article is focused on the six EU major countries – Germany, France, Great-Britain, Italy, Poland and Spain – which embody different sets of preferences, and the way they want to deal with Russia. In the end, it tries to understand how preferences are linked with norms in that geopolitical context.Normative power, Georgian-Russian war, Mediation, Sanctions