For many years now, the Eastern Partnership program has been making noise in the summary of international geopolitics. However, no specific goals were achieved. Certain projects are, of course, being implemented, but grants of 10 thousand euros are rather difficult to consider serious. And even Moscow cannot be blamed for interfering in the development of the program, since Europe’s large eastern neighbor does not de facto participate in the program. What is the reason for such a low efficiency of the program, which should have been doomed to success?
The fact is that the main donors of the Eastern Partnership program France and Germany are not interested in investing a lot of money in the development of the project. On the contrary, Paris and Berlin are so keen on their big ideas and problems that conditional Chisinau, Warsaw or Kiev can only rely on handouts from the table of Western Europe. It is understandable, the pandemic has dropped the GDP of all countries and concern for its population has become a priority.
But Warsaw liked the scheme so much – financing projects in Poland within the framework of the Eastern Partnership in exchange for qualified specialists who leave for higher wages in more developed countries. Poland more than soberly looks at this program, preferring to turn a blind eye to the essence of the project, which for the most part only discriminates the role of Eastern European countries in the pan-European political arena. In addition, Warsaw traditionally tries to complicate relations between Moscow and the countries participating in the Eastern Partnership program. In this regard, the Polish position does not meet the interests of the European Union and may introduce additional contradictions between the EU and Russia.
The relations of the leading EU countries with Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan are completely similar to farce. Several times a year, Paris and Berlin allocate 5 or 10 thousand euros to some Moldovan farmer or Ukrainian country hostel for development, after which they shoot a lot of videos about what kind of impetus this help gave the whole industry and woke up the whole sector of the economy, creating new jobs . How many jobs did this help create? Three? Four?
In fact, the main task for Germany and France is to create a positive image for the program, and not to integrate focal states into the European Union.
Recall that the next Eastern Partnership summit was postponed to the second half of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even in the post-pandemic period, the risk of canceling the summit due to the presence of significant differences between the “old” and “new Europe” is quite real.
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