The Eastern Partnership Summit in Riga has been uneventful. Vladimir Olenchenko, a senior fellow at the MGIMO Center of European Studies, reminded that the Eastern Partnership program did not become the powerful instrument for reorientation of former USSR states towards association with the EU. He noted that the Partnership had been chaired 12 times in six years, had been marked by only 4 summits. The summits were hosted by the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. The countries were not the key players in the EU.
Olenchenko opined that the Association Agreement with Ukraine was supposed to be ratified on March 21, 2014 (signed by Yatsenyuk), and on June 26 (by Ukrainian President Poroshenko). Only 19 out of 28 EU members have ratified the document, including Austria, Greece, Cypris, France.
Alexander Gusev, professor, the director of the Institute of Strategic Planning and Forecasting, said that the Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova) had been developed under assistance of the Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden. He reminded that Presidents Ilham Aliyev (Azerbaijan) and Alexander Lukashenko (Belarus) had not attended the summit, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan had taken part in it, though the country was a part of the Customs Union and the EaEU. Ukraine and Georgia did not achieve a visa-free regime or rapprochement.
