EU urges countries of Eastern Partnership

 The EU's relations with the countries of the Eastern Partnership (EP) are at a turning point, said EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule in an interview with the Neighborhood Information Centre.

   "The main priority of relations with Eastern partners is the effective implementation of the large-scale program, adopted at the Warsaw Summit of the Eastern Partnership (29-30 September 2011). We offer our partners a close political association and deep economic integration," said Fule.

   He said the EU's main instrument to implement the EP program is an association agreement, which also aims to create deep and comprehensive free trade areas in the respective regions.

    "In Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia negotiations on the association agreements are ongoing, and our priority is to develop them as quickly as possible so that at the time of the next summit of the EP in the autumn 2013 we are close to completing or even initialing them," he said.

    Also, the EU, according to Fule, has an extensive plan of action in the field of mobility, whose ultimate aim is the establishment of visa-free regimes. 

   "We intend to deepen the partnership with civil society, to increase financial assistance to civil society organizations and to provide more investment in young people of the Eastern Partnership countries through increased participation in our educational program Erasmus for All," he said.

     After several years of relative stagnation in the region, democracy is more and more entrenched and there is a desire for a more responsible form of government and for improvement of the situation with human rights and fundamental freedoms.

   "For twelve months the EU has done a great job. We have adapted the tools of our policy. We continue to work on updating the contractual relationship, receive mandates for new trade talks, have begun dialogue on mobility, and refocus and increase our financial aid (600 million euros to support the transition to democracy, economic development and contacts between people). And in the extended mandate of the EIB and the EBRD, we have opened access to significant additional investments in the partner countries," said the member of the European Commission.

   According to Fule, this trend should be maintained, but the majority of partner countries have welcomed the new European neighborhood policy proposed by the EU, and expressed their willingness to continue even more strongly the political and economic reform, and actively cooperate with the EU.

   Cooperation with the Eastern partners is based on shared commitment to fundamental values ​​of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Therefore, further strengthening democracy in the partner countries is of paramount importance, he said.

   Eastern Partnership is a Polish-Swedish initiative under the neighborhood policy, aimed at improving the EU's relations with six former Soviet countries - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine. The European Union is to allocate 600 million euros to these states until 2013, according to the project. -02D-