European Union: Eastern Partnership launch

The Commission has just published an overview of the Eastern Partnership of the European Union: Eastern Parnership (Brussels 5 May 2009, MEMO/09/217), meant to forge ties between the 27 EU member states and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.



The Eastern Partnership can be seen as a relaunch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), and the press release describes its main points.

***

Summit

The Commission’s press release Eastern Partnership Summit to strengthen EU links with Eastern Europe and South Caucasus (Brussels, 5 May 2009, IP/09/700) offers information about the 7 May summit in Prague, where the new cooperation framework is launched, covering political and economic relations, energy security and, mobility, as well as pro-democratic and market oriented reforms.



***

Further information

Further information and documents, are available on the web pages Eastern Partnership of the Commission’s Directorate-General External Relations.



***

Outside views

Ahto Lobjakas has written a short evaluation for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: EU’s Eastern Partnership Strains To Juggle Interests, Values (29 April 2009).



Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform wrote another outside assessment in his blog post Economic crisis and the ‘eastern partnership’ (10 March 2009).





Ralf Grahn