In this chapter we provide an analysis of European Union (EU) narratives and policies with respect to mass mobilisations in Eastern Europe (EE) and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Specifically, the focus here is on the 2004 ‘Orange Revolution’ and the recent ‘EuroMaidan’ in Ukraine; as well as on the 2011 ‘J25’ Egyptian revolution and the later summer 2013 cycle of protests and violence following the ousting of President Mohammad Morsi. European Union and ‘EU3’ (French, German, British) perspectives and policies are compared to those of ‘new’ EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe, identifying and accounting for patterns of convergence and divergence.
We argue that the tilt toward donor interests over recipient needs in aid allocation and practices may be particularly strong in new partnerships. Using the natural experiment of Eastern transition we find that commercial and strategic concerns influenced both aid flows and entry in the first half of the 1990s, but much less so later on. We also find that fractionalization increased and that early aid to the region was particularly volatile, unpredictable and tied. Our results may explain why aid to Iraq and Afghanistan has had little development impact and serves as warning for Burma and Arab Spring regimes.