ArmInfo. The main issue today is not so much the amount of funding or this or that opportunity provided by the Eastern Partnership project, but how the partner countries use these opportunities, Deputy Director of the Eastern Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland Rafal Poborski expressed a similar opinion, answering the question of ArmInfo.
"Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, which have signed the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement with the EU, use these opportunities to a greater extent than Armenia, which signed the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with us. In this light, Belarus and Azerbaijan are a separate issue. Meanwhile, this issue is of fundamental importance for the future prospects of the project, "the diplomat said.
In this light, Poborski assesses the ambitions of the Eastern Partnership, in particular, the ambitions of Poland, as significantly surpassing the existing realities. At the same time, the diplomat believes that the European project is developing and has further prospects. At the same time, the Polish diplomat mentioned the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a factor influencing the Caucasian vector of the Eastern Partnership project. According to his estimates, the unresolved conflict is an obstacle to the development of a common position on European integration by the countries of the region.
"In any case, Poland stands for an exclusively peaceful settlement of this conflict, solely on the basis of the principles of international law. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Poland made its own proposals on this issue, which were expressed by Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz ," Poborski concluded.
The Eastern Partnership is a project of the European Union initiated by Poland and Sweden, the main stated goal of which is developing the integration ties of the European Union with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Three of the six states: Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova declared joining the European Union as the goal of their foreign policy. In May 2019, a high-level conference was held in Brussels in honor of the 10th anniversary of the Eastern Partnership program.