EU's New Strategy in Central Asia and Transition from a Normative Power to a Pragmatic Actor

The European Union's approach to Central Asia has undergone major developments over the past three decades. Compared to the EU's previous strategy in Central Asia (March 2007), its new strategy (May 2019) is influenced by the EU's changing global attitude towards external sovereignty. The present paper tries to answer the following questions: "What are the developments of the EU strategy in Central Asia since the independence of the Central Asian Republics and what reasons lay behind these changes?" In order to find an answer for the questions mentioned above, the hypothesis which has been tested is: "the European Union's strategy in Central Asia is gradually moving away from applying external sovereignty of European values in Central Asia towards external sovereignty of technical criteria and is trying to increase resilience of the countries of this region based on pragmatism with the goal of greater profit. The reason for this change is the negative response of the Central Asian governments to the export of European values and the EU's decreasing benefits of the region compared to other actors." Using descriptive - analytical research methodology the authors try to tell why the research findings provide an answer to the research question.  The theoretical framework underlying this study is the binary of normative power Europe versus the decentralization agenda. The findings of the paper confirm its hypothesis.