The EU Kaliningrad Policy: Mapping Kaliningrad's Place inside the European Union.

The Kaliningrad Oblast is a subject of the Russian Federation which became an EU's enclave upon its Eastern enlargement of 2004. This inquiry examines the intricate position of the Kaliningrad region inside the European Union from a legal and institutional rather than geopolitical perspective. Challenging conventional notions about inclusion of third units into the EU and attempting to bridge a gap in the academic literature on the EU's policy towards Kaliningrad, the paper tests the hypothesis that the Kaliningrad Oblast is to a certain extent included or integrated into the EU. More particularly, while spelling out and assessing the EU's Kaliningrad policy it seeks to answer the main research question as to whether this policy can be qualified as essentially a policy of inclusion. The inquiry proceeds from manifold assumptions of the 'insides' and 'outsides' of the EU, the growing flexibility of models of integration into the Union as well as the notions of the EU's borders including geopolitical, institutional/legal, transactional and cultural borders which consistently become fuzzier. A substantial part of the paper rests on the study of the bilateral political, legal and institutional relationship between the EU and Russia. Furthermore, the paper scrutinizes the oblast's legal capacity in international relations, as well as its status of Special Economic Zone in the framework of Russian federal policy. It eventually traces and systematizes the EU's activities in its eastern enclave. Although the analysis of the policy by the EU directed towards Kaliningrad does not allow calling it a clear policy of inclusion it still dismisses the idea of the EU treating Kaliningrad as a clear outsider.

Irina Ochirova hat Anglistische Philologie an der Kalmykischen Staatlichen Universität studiert. Anschließend hat sie ein Masterstudium 'Gender Studies' an der Central European University, Budapest abgeschlossen. Schließlich hat sie am Bulgarisch-Rumänischen Interuniversitären Europazentrum in Ruse (Bulgarien) einen Master in European Studies erworben. 2010 hat sie ihre Promotion im Fach Europa-Studien an der Technischen Universität Chemnitz erfolgreich abgeschlossen. Zur Zeit ist sie Lehrbeauftragte an der TU Chemnitz. Ihre Forschungsinteressen schließen die Außenpolitik der EU und Russland, die Beziehungen zwischen der EU und Russland und die Modernisierung Russlands ein.