The Eastern Neighborhood currently represents one of the key challenges to the progress of European integration, as a key symbolic as well as strategic battleground across which competing geopolitical, socio-economic and identitary claims are articulated. In many such understandings, imagined or real collisions of cultures are transposed into civilizational arguments, whether regarding the ‘spiritual unity’ of Eastern Slavs or the ‘genuinely Western character’ of Central Europe, or ‘the European community of values’as opposed to the post-Soviet space. Such arguments present a key challenge for the European Union in its relations with its Eastern Partners, as well as the wider region. The aim of the Network NEMESIS - Memory and Securitization in the EU and Neighborhood is to shed new light on these dynamics by - bringing together expertise on the socio-economic, cultural-historical as well as geopolitical-security aspects of the symbolic and real competition for this region;- helping to better inform current debates and, especially, to further better common understanding between the EU and its Neighbours.The Action will focus on three points specifically: - The revival of ‘grand narratives’ such as supposedly competing ‘civilizational spaces’ or ‘return of the Cold War’ ones;- the use of historical and security arguments in the contest between churches and religious associations;- more discrete forms of competition for regional influence in ‘soft securitisation’ discourses.Through its various public outreach and engagement activities, the Action will supplement academic analysis of the above by bringing together interdisciplinary academic expertise with practitioners from relevant EU institutions and from the region, along with representatives of religious communities and diaspora groups and, importantly, journalists from both the print as well as internet-based media.