The EaP Achievements in Ukraine and Georgia: Public Opinion vs. Institutional Changes

Abstract

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) initiative with the Eastern neighbors of the European Union, including Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Belarus, was introduced by Polish and Swedish diplomats in June 2008 and published in a communique of the European Commission in December 2008. Since then, there has been a launch of a qualitatively new form of cooperation for all sides, officially starting in May 2009 with the EaP Summit in Prague. The EaP initiative is aimed to ‘create necessary conditions for the facilitation of political association and further economic integration between the European Union and interested country partners’. Within the EaP initiative, the Eastern neighbors of the EU formed a so-called ‘own club’ in order to strengthen the neighborhood policy of the EU. Geopolitical claims about EU integration were based on the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and its financial component—the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI).