32 European countries including Armenia launch the Eastern Partnership

This unprecedented Summit assembled the Heads of the State or Heads of Government of all EU countries and of the EU’s “Eastern Neighbours”: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

According to the Summit declaration, the Eastern Partnership (EaP) is to “bring the relationship [between the EU and partner countries] to a new level” and aims to accelerate political association between them and to deepen the integration of partner countries into the EU. The EaP is explicitly not a roadmap for EU accession however, and is developed “without prejudice to individual countries’ aspirations for their future relationship with the EU.”

Among other innovations, the EaP proposes to bring about deep free-trade areas, combining open borders and regulatory approximation, through bilateral agreements at first, and through multilateral frameworks later on. It will also aim to increase  mobility between EU and partner countries by introducing visa facilitation agreements.

These, and other measures envisaged by the EaP, could provide the tangible and demonstrable benefits that would help build political momentum in favour of further EU integration and EU-inspired reform.

The EaP also introduces a novel multilateral framework at governmental level to promote dialogue and cooperation among Eastern partner countries and to develop common initiatives. Four “platforms” will focus on democracy and governance issues, economic cooperation and convergence with EU law, contacts between people and energy security.

This multilateral framework should not be restricted to governmental dialogue alone however. The Summit also proposed to develop a Civil Society Forum and a EU Parliamentary Assembly to accompany the process.

The EaP is complementary to the European Neighbourhood Policy in existence since 2003*, whose geographical coverage is broader and which has more modest goals. Like the EaP however, it seeks a balance between the regional approach and individual treatment of partner countries, and remains non-committal on the issue of eventual EU membership.

A conference of officials and political analysts convened at the initiative of the EU’s Czech Presidency the day after the Summit commented acknowledged that “hopes and expectations had been unreasonably high” following the revolutions in the Ukraine and Georgia, and that the EaP marked a “new beginning” and was an ambitious project”.

From Armenia’s point of view, the EaP is undoubtedly a significant step forward. Armenia has been seeking to maximize the EU’s contribution to political and economic reforms in the country through, and it is considered a good reformer in the region when it comes to legislative and administrative reform. EU integration is furthermore overwhelmingly popular in the country, but successive governments have taken a pragmatic, gradualist approach to European integration.