The
Eastern Partnership Initiative was under discussion in Brussels involving
various organizations and experts almost very day. In the course of the
European Summit which took place recently in the capital of the United Europe, the
European Policy Centre on 19 March 2009 organized a specialized expert meeting
in the format of Policy Dialogue with participation of the Foreign Ministers of
Czech Republic and Poland, i.e. Karel Schwarzenbergand Radosław Sikorski, Vice Prime Minister
of Ukraine for European and International integration Hryhoriy Nemyriaand the European Commissioner for External Relations and
European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner. The topic of the
meeting was pragmatic: “Eastern Partnership: how far, how
deep and how fast”.
For
reference, this initiative was later on formed into the Eastern Partnership and
was initially proposed by Poland and Sweden, while the
Czech Presidency in the EU listed this issue among priorities. Mr. Karel
Schwarzenberg said that with regard to this initiative there are four major ‘NO’s:
It is NOT an
anti-Russian initiative;
Its implementation does
NOT require changes in the contemporary economic situation;
Eastern Partnership does
NOT duplicate other EU initiatives and instruments;
It is NOT aiming at the EU
enlargement.
All
speakers showed their understanding of the perspectives and tasks of the Eastern
Partnership however it is worth mentioning that the most active position with
the broadest consideration of interests of Eastern neighbours was presented by Poland in the course
of the meeting. Radoslaw Sikorski pointed out that the today’s framework of the
Eastern Partnership was an absolute minimum of what should be done by the
European Union with regard to its neighbours. The Minister believes that the
top priorities within the Eastern Partnership should be abolition of the visa
regime with the partner countries of the Eastern Partnership, development of
wider trade relations, significant enlargement of the overall budget of the Initiative
and introduction of a position of the Special Coordinator of this Programme vis-à-vis
the European Union.
One
of the representatives of the partner countries in the course of the meeting
was Ukraine, which stand for the priority of the development of the bilateral
relations with the EU, on the grounds that it has already moved a lot further
in its relations with the EU, therefore a number of basic steps planned within
the Eastern Partnership was no longer attributable to it. In the view of the Vice
Prime Minister, Ukraine ahs already chosen its geopolitical policy therefore
the major accents for Ukraine in its relations with the EU should be
concentrated around issues of visa-free regime, open markets and energy
security. The position of Ukraine is
understood however it does not really correspond to the Belarusian interests,
as well as to the interests of other neighbours, less successful in the
European integration issues.
As
of today the issue of the level of participation of Belarus in the
Initiative still remains unresolved. However even if the Belarusian authorities
regardless of their earlier declarations will not express their wish to join
the Eastern Partnership, to a certain extent Belarus will still be taking part
in the joint activities via planned multilateral instruments. In particular,
one of such instruments is a so-called Civil Forum, which is aiming for inclusion
of civil associations, trade unions and other citizen’s organizations of all
six neighbouring countries of the EU in the East into the process of discussion
and control over the development of the Eastern Partnership.
The European Commissioner for External
Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner confirmed
once again the steady desire to see Belarus as a participant of the Eastern
Partnership in the fullest format. However she said that to the moment there
was no sustainable interest from the Belarusian side and that there were no signs
of sufficient real steps made forward behind the rhetoric. Nevertheless, “the
door for Belarus was still held open”.
On
the 21st March the EU Summit approved the Eastern Partnership
Initiative on principle, therefore now the European Commission would initiate a
special round of call for proposals and comments regarding the concrete format
of this initiative. This is a special case when the EU itself does not have
prepared answers and schemes therefore all active players from the six Eastern
neighbouring countries have real chances to influence the final versions of the
Programme so that it correlates with their needs.
Active
debates around the Eastern Partnership in Brussels are very
impressive however it would be desired to see the same level of the ‘degree’ of
the discussion in our country as well. Our website has already published the
existing proposals and recommendations with regard to the Eastern Partnership,
elaborated by an expert of the “Centre for Social Innovations”, Andrey Yehorau.
Perhaps it is only the begging and in the course of the following several weeks
our experts will become involved in this so to say discussion of vital
importance in a form of publications or real discussions that the team of the website
eurobelarus.info is planning to organize in the nearest future.
Numerous
activists of the Belarusian civil organizations and expert groups that actively
support the participation of Belarus in the Eastern Partnership in the course
of regular consultations and topical discussions that are taking place in
Brussels in the past few months hope that our country will use this opportunity
in the most efficient way. Certain steps forward towards liberalization of the economic
situation in the country, a well as positive but inconsistent and insufficient
actions of the Belarusian authorities towards changes could be reflected in the
more active participation of Belarus in the
Eastern Partnership on both bilateral and multilateral levels. However this
requires certain political will, healthy pragmatism and strategic sight. The
nearest future will show to what extent these features could be attributed to
the Belarusian authorities as well as to the civil sector today.
