By Vestnik Kavkaza
Ahead of the Riga summit of the Eastern Partnership, a representative of the hosting side, an Ambassador-at-Large for the Eastern Partnership at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, Juris Poikans, stated that the heads of state did not plan to sign serious documents. According to him, the goal of the Riga summit is to give a clear signal that the EU will continue helping Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, which have signed association agreements, while three other countries will be treated individually.
However, these three countries treated the Eastern Partnership specifically themselves. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev didn’t go to the summit at all, as he had been busy due to the upcoming European Games in Baku. Representatives of Armenia and Belarus rejected signing the resolution of the summit, as it contained words about the ‘annexing’ of Crimea by Russia. Now European diplomats are rapidly rewriting the resolution so that today the final document would be signed.
Moscow views the Eastern Partnership negatively. According to Alexei Martynov, the head of the International Institute for Newest States, “the Eastern Partnership is a candy which is promised to these countries which are being involved in projects which have a primarily anti-Russian character. Europe doesn’t need the project. It was initiated by Poland, which was supported by Sweden. The people who generated the project through the Poles were sure for no reason that those who live beyond the seas had invented a new anti-Russian thing, while Europe would have paid for this. But Europe didn’t plan to pay for this, even though it was polite and pretended that it spent resources, an insignificant sum of money.”
Martynov thinks that “if the project had money which was similar to the economic and financial support which was provided by Russia to these countries, we couldn’t predict what would be a result of the project. But Europe turned out to be unready to pay for such geopolitical amusements of its American partners. Thus, today the Eastern Partnership is only a platform for anti-Russian statements, while its summits are a place where one can come and curse Russia.”
The expert admitted that initially the participants of the Eastern Partnership started an active dialogue, hoping for financial and economic support and free access to European financial and technological markets. “Russia rarely demands a fee for friendship; it simply builds friendly relations and pays for all friends all together. In Europe they faced a different approach,” Martynov said. “We cannot say that the countries are absolutely disappointed about the project; many of them still have illusions. But when a new integration project in the post-Soviet space appeared – the EAEU, with prospects of cooperation with China and Turkey – many of them realized that the Eastern Partnership is a questionable thing. Of course Europe is great, but the EAEU offers real projects and a pragmatic approach.”
