The Association Agreements with the European Union´s Eastern Partners

As a consequence of signing an Association Agreement with the European Union, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine can be expected to suffer high political costs, while the economic benefits they can expect in return remain uncertain, in particular in the short- and medium-term. Their decision to sign such an agreement can therefore be described as puzzling. By comparing those three countries to the other three countries that participate in the EU´s Eastern Partnership but declined to sign an Association Agreement (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus), this paper aims at answering the question of why they did so anyway.