With the bold title EasternPartnership policy beyond 2020: Reinforcing Resilience – an Eastern Partnershipthat delivers for all, the recent EU Joint Communication offers a broad array of policy orientations but little operational specificity, find the authors of this commentary.
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – each with EU Association Agreements, requested a ‘quadrilogue’ with the EU to deal with matters of common concern to them but not the other EaP states. The fact that this request was not granted is a glaring omission from the Communication, but one that could still be corrected at the EaP summit on June 18th. The summit should also agree the policy direction of the EU and the Eastern partner states beyond 2020, and include the many transnational issues worthy of quadrilateral consultations. Among these issues is how the revision of major EU policies, such as those on energy, climate and competition, may affect the associated states.
