The Future of the EU Eastern Partnership

Abstract

The enlargement process is one of the key foreign policy instruments of the European Union. Expansion of the European Union helped respond to major changes resulting from the collapse of the socialist system in Europe, and consolidate democracy, human rights and stability in the Central and Eastern European countries that became members of the European Union. European Union included the rest of the eastern neighborhoods within the policy of the Eastern Partnership with whom, without the promise of the membership perspective, planned a similar scenario. However, after six years, this initiative
neither hproved to be adequate in solving the problems of the eastern neighborhood, nor brough closer the countries of the Eastern Partnership to the European values; as it was conceived within the European Union. In addition, the failure of the implementation of the political goals of the Eastern Partnership once again pointed to the lack of unity within the European Union and the existence of different interests regards eastern neighbors. At the same time, new developments in the eastern neighborhoods – changing geopolitical context, Russia’s foreign policy, Ukrainian crisis, the emergence of alternative forms of integration in the Eurasian Economic Community – calling for a specific role of the European Union towards its neighbors to the east and to redefine the Eastern Partnership policy. This paper addresses the question of the future of the Eastern Partnership policy with emphasis on the possibility of including the eastern neighborhood in the wider context of EU enlargement policy. Although new enlargement quite certain will not be seen be in the foreseeable future, the European Union should at least propose some new solutions in order to continue the process of rapprochement of the countries of the Eastern Partnership to the EU . Given the current economic and political situation in the European Union, the real changes can be expected only through reform of existing initiatives – Eastern Partnership and the European Neighbourhood Policy.