The European Union (EU) continuingly searches for more effective policy towards its eastern neighbours, which is reflected in the ongoing adaptation of its existing approaches, discourses and policy strategies to the new challenges of its external environment. In order to understand the complexity and limitations of the EU framework under the European neighbourhood policy and the eastern partnership initiative – that is, to consider the interface between policy instruments, institutional structures and multiple agents – one needs to adopt an original analytical perspective of practices to comprehensively assess the policies’ outcomes. With this in mind, this issue sets to discern patterns of social practices between the EU and its eastern neighbours, and examine how these relations guide agents’ interactions in various policy areas. This introduction outlines the theoretical framework synergising the three fundamental concepts – of practices, policy instruments and social structures – that have predicated research for this issue. It also outlines the structure and main arguments of the individual case-studies which inform the issue’s conceptual framework.