SHADOW · SHADOW: An exploration of the nature of informal economies and shadow practices in the former USSR region

Extending from Eastern Europe to Eastern Asia, from the Caucasus to Central Asia, the post-USSR region, occupying almost one sixth of the world’s territory, has an immense potential for the EU as source of natural resources and potential market for EU companies. In spite of this, the region is often seen as a highly hazardous one to deal with, given its “uncertain business and investment climate with widespread opportunism and corruption, misuse and misappropriation of state assets and conflicting information flow”SHADOW is a research and training programme with the goal of producing strategic intelligence on the region and train a generation of specialists on informality in post-Soviet spaces. Our goals are two-fold: 1) we intend to construct an index to provide an accurate measurement of the level of shadow activities in our target countries; 2) we aim to conceptualise a taxonomy of shadow practices in the post-USSR region in a cross-country and cross-regional perspective. Both goals are intended to contribute to a much better understanding of the threats and opportunities that the former USSR region, of fundamental importance for the EU, offers.