Advantages of Latvia in Economic Cooperation with EU Eastern Partnership Countries. The Role of University

The article focuses on the Eastern Partnership initiative of the European Union’s Neighbourhood policy and Latvia`s advantages in cooperation with Eastern Partnership countries including those of historical, geographical, social and economic sort. It also gives an example of academic involvement in EU policy matters, in particular, with the focus on Eastern Partnership. Within the case study of the article, the authors tend to keep the viewpoint from the perspective of Latvia. So far, though, there is not much of the sustaining economic cooperation between Latvia and Eastern Partnership countries. But since Latvia is a recent and comparatively lower developed European Union’s Member State and has quite common historic roots as well as quite good geographical positioning with Eastern Partnership countries, it is worth to analyse the potential of economic cooperation.