EU's Eastern Partnership fails plan to check Russia: The Guardian

PanARMENIAN.Net - A summit in Riga this week is likely to highlight the failure of the EU’s flagship programme designed to entice six former Soviet states out of Moscow’s orbit and into the embrace of Brussels, The Guardian reports.

Accoridng to the Guardian, "The Eastern Partnership scheme was set up in 2009 in response to Russian actions in Georgia and was meant to check Russia’s ambitions in what Moscow regards as its “near abroad”, while offering the vaguest of suggestions of future EU membership.

The Kremlin’s intervention in Ukraine, however, combined with even less desire in the EU to see the bloc expand further, has left the Eastern Partnership concept in turmoil, with two of the six countries joining the Kremlin’s Eurasian Economic Union, explicitly designed as a rival to the EU."

Meanwhile, Ukraine and Georgia, the most fervently pro-EU of the six, are likely to be given little in the way of carrots at the summit in Riga, The Guardian said.

"In the runup to Riga, EU officials are publicly claiming they are still as committed as ever to the Eastern Partnership. But the rhetoric shows the bloc is now extremely worried about provoking Russia and the voices of EU member states less hawkish on Russia are in the ascendancy.

Trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the EU were held this week in Brussels to iron out the details and time scale of the implementation of the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement.

Among some of the partner countries, enthusiasm for the project is also on the wane. Azerbaijan, aware that the EU is interested in its energy supplies anyway, has lost interest in the programme. President Ilham Aliyev will not attend the Riga summit, apparently in protest at European complaints about the country’s human rights record. Belarus and Armenia are still engaging with the programme but have become members of Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union, ruling out real economic or political integration with the EU.

That leaves Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova still keen on EU integration and eventual membership, but here it is the EU itself that is trying to slow things down," The Guardian concludes.