EASTERN PARTNERSHIP FROM PRAGUE TO VILNIUS. WHAT WENT WRONG?
Abstract
On 28-29 November 2013, Vilnius hosted the 3rd Eastern Partnership Summit, at which several former Soviet republics were expected to ascend to a higher institutional level in their relations with the European Union. Belarus and Azerbaijan preferred to step aside, while two other members (Armenia and Ukraine) left the program in the fall of 2013 when the talks were over. Georgia and Moldova initialed but did not sign the Association Agreement with the EU. This means that four-and-a-half years of this highly ambitious program produced very modest results, primarily due to the fact that Ukraine, the region’s biggest player, excused itself from signing. This did not put a full stop to the relations between the Eastern Partnership (EP) members and the EU; however, the Vilnius Summit marked an intermediate finish of sorts. The old strategy ran into a dead end, leaving Brussels without a new strategy for its relations with its Eastern neighbors. To move forward, the EU should try to find out what went wrong.
We should analyze what has happened and why. Here I have tried to comprehend how the relations between the EU and Soviet successor states developed under the project to provide (probably delayed) answers to the following questions:
1. Did the summit fail because Russia was very skeptical about the results of European integration for its neighbors?
2. Why did this problem come to the fore in mid-2013 rather than in 2008 when it all started?
3. Why did the Russian factor (described as an imminent threat to the European programs on the post-Soviet space) remain neglected?
To correctly understand the motivation of what has been done and to avoid unsubstantiated assessments, we need to look at what happened in Vilnius from the perspective of Brussels, Moscow, and the post-Soviet capitals involved. I will rely on the chronology of the EP project divided into three key periods:
- From May 2008 when the program was announced to May 2009 when it started;
- Repeated actualization of the program, which stretched from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2011;
- Speeding up the talks in preparation for the Vilnius Summit and the zero-sum game between Russia and the EU (2013).
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The article was written before 27 June 2014, the date Georgia signed the Association Agreement with the EU.
Before 1995, the EU consisted of 12 countries; by the end of 2013, there were 28 members.
Today, 47 countries belong to the Council of Europe; Belarus is the only European country (if we do not count the European microstates) to be left outside it.
Regulatory documents go into the minutest details regarding agricultural production, including the angle at which cucumbers should grow on their stems and the size of apples; there are obligatory quotas on the products sold by any specific country (overproduction is condemned). This makes the European economy short of planned.
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Compare the text of the agreement with Armenia: The European Union and the Republic of Armenia. Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, available at [http://www.mineconomy.am/uploades/PCA_EU-Armenia.pdf].
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In Estonia, for example, unemployment increased from 5.5% in 2008 to 16.9% in 2010; in Ireland, it rose from 6.4% to 13.9% in the same period; and in Spain from 11.3% to 20.1%. This went on everywhere across the EU, Germany being the only exception (see: Eurostat, Unemployment Rate by Sex and Age Groups—Annual Average, %).
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After the parliamentary elections of October 2012 in Georgia, many foreign observers doubted the country’s further foreign policy orientation. The new people in power confirmed that it would remain the same (see: Address of the Prime Minister of Georgia H.E. Bidzina Ivanishvili to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, available at [http://www.government.gov.ge/index.php?lang_id=ENG&sec_id=270&info_id=36672]).
Average by “linkage,” “approximation,” and “management.”
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For example, Carl Bildt, one of the authors of the EP project, says that it was devised to remove the borders in Europe, one of the ideas popular in Europe during the Cold War (see: C. Bildt, “Vostochnoe partnerstvo—Evropa bez razmezhevatelnykh granits,” Den-Kiev, 3 October 2013, available at [http://day.kiev.ua/ru/article/den-planety/vostochnoe-partnerstvo-ev
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The ruling coalition in Moldova is called Alliance for European Integration.
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