Regionalization of EU – Belarus Relations: the Path for Europeanization or a Possibility to Overpass the Crisis? /Conference paper from the 4th International Conference on Belarus "Belarus and Its Neighbours Historical Perceptions and Political Constructs", Lazarski University, Warsaw, 2012. ISBN: 978-83-60694-49-7.

The EU position regarding Belarus is based on political conditionality of dialogue: political freedoms and respect to human rights are conditions sine qua non. The Belarusian authorities, in turn, refute accusations of human rights violations and non-observance of democratic principles. However, conditionality approach has already proven to be ineffective, the EU followed this policy in quite an inconsistent and reactive way. Political conditionality if needed is used by the Belarusian authorities as a window of opportunity for political bargaining. As a result, it narrows the potential cooperation tool kit, has negative impact on the dynamics of contacts and cooperation at the middle level. This paper argue that since regional, or territorial, dimension of integration does not have such a strong dependence on general political context of EU–Belarus relations, regionalization as a strategy of inclusion of partners into European cooperation instruments, creates a good basis for institutional convergence. Regional dimensions of integration can help identify new common points for overcoming foreign policy crises and to find out if the regionalization strategy can become efficient for gradual inclusion of Belarusian territories into the European partnership framework both at the level of separate organizations (governmental and non-governmental) and at the inter-state level. Thereby, this article sets the aim to answer the question whether the regionalization of EU–Belarus relations can be a way to overcome tensions and political crises in the future.