This cycle of seminars is the first piece of a three-year project under the EU-East Dialogues Jean Monnet Module starting in 2022. The Module concerns the relations of the EU with its East Neighbours with a special focus on the connections among civil rights, democracy, and free and fair trade. The project focuses on non-EU member countries such as Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, and the dynamics of EU-Russia relations. The scientific literature highlighted how these countries, far from fully realising the expected democratic transition turned into a complex variety of legal-political systems. This Module aims to study this complex assortment of legal-political systems and provide students of the next generation with the required analytical background. From the EU perspective, trade is not only an economic process but also a means to export values. Therefore, the improvement and protection of civil rights are becoming crucial components of the EU trade policy towards its East Neighbours. The seminar cycle combines legal studies and political science, to investigate EU policies as well as the particular variety of Eastern European systems. Within the general goals of the Module, the expected results of this seminar cycle include the following: increasing the awareness of the legal and political dynamics related to Eastern Europe; contributing to EU priority domains and policies as the promotion of rule of law and free and fair trade.