During last year upon the request of StrategEast the experts from the Eastern Partnership countries commented on the most critical issues of the Eastern Partnership. Today StrategEast presented this work in the report “Eastern Partnership Development”. The main goal of the report is to give European institutions an opportunity to correct their programs of cooperation with the European Partnership countries based on the received feedback, and to shift the focus of collaboration to the subjects demanded by civil society.
In his keynote speech, StrategEast President Anatoly Motkin emphasized that during last year Eastern Partnership went through a kind of crash test. “At the beginning of the second decade of its work, Eastern Partnership has encountered unprecedented challenges: transitional economics of six east European countries and Caucasus are facing significant difficulties caused by lockdowns during the pandemic, the imperfection of the health care system in some countries has brought the population to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, the truly heated war has unfolded between two participants of the Eastern Partnership – Armenia and Azerbaijan; Belarusian authorities declared the reduction of their participating level in Eastern Partnership to experts and recently suspended participation in the EaP,” Mr. Motkin described the challenges of the initiative.
The presentation was attended by experts from the EaP countries, who shared their views on the work of the initiative.
Kakha Gogolashvili, a senior fellow and Director of European Studies Center at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies shared his take on EU’s approach in supporting Georgia: “At the beginning of the pandemic, the EU shifted to urgent assistance to Georgia. The EU’s assistance was dedicated mainly to the sector of health, social sphere and some sectors of the economy which needed to survive, including support of SMEs, which was very timely at that moment. But it was impossible to change EU’s policy instantly, so the support hasn’t covered new developments or economic change. I insist that in Georgia, we need qualitative changes in the economic policy. Currently, Georgia seems to be between the resource economy and innovative economy. We need to shift to innovation-driven model and very much welcome the opportunity to cooperate with the EU on achieving this.”
Heghine Aleksanyan, an analyst at “Enlight” Public Research Center NGO, Armenia, commented on cooperation of ICT sector development: “Benefits from digitalization, which the pandemic dictates, will very much depend on the synchronization between the EU and EaP countries and each country’s capability in terms of provision of these benefits. For most citizens of Armenia some “digital dividends” are visible in two main fields: public administration where improvements in public-private cooperation occurred; and in business with the rise of competition and new jobs creation. At the same time, the problem of scarcity of workforce in IT should be addressed in Armenia. We definitely need some EU initiatives targeted at developing skills in ICT sector.”
Commenting the areas of EU’s future Eastern Partnership policy announced last December by Josep Borrell, Vice-President of the European Commission, Artem Bidenko, head of the Institute of Information Security in Ukraine underlined that no area can be singled out as a priority. “I don’t think that any part of a complex system is more important than its another part. So neither societal resilience, nor digital or economic one can be named as the most important. All of these ways of resilience are parts of such a complex system as society. We should evaluate the development of a society in terms of its openness and level of participation as the more inclusive a society is, the more effectively the system develops. We should work with large businesses as well as small entrepreneurs, take care of the environment and enhance information security and digital security to ensure the best development of the society. We expect the EU to help us on this path.”
Dr. Kateryna Bornukova, academic director of BEROC Economic Research Center, Belarus commented the issues of EU-Belarus cooperation: “Unfortunately, Belarus has ended its participation in the Eastern Partnership a couple of days ago. But even before the political crisis Belarus has been viewing the EU primarily as an economic partner and it was not looking to integrate any further than that, it has never stated the desire to become the EU member as some point of time. I do not think that economic or other relationship with the EU would improve the situation significantly before the political change in Belarus. Actually, what the EU is doing right now is the correct way. It keeps supporting Belarusians, its civil society and private sector and assured it will continue to do so even despite the exit from the EaP.”
Shahla Ismayil, Chairwoman, Women’s Association for Rational Development (WARD), Azerbaijan talked about gender issues. “Azerbaijan continues facing numerous gender-based restrictions. Yet indeed some digital transition during the pandemic should and may have led to certain move forward in gender equality. However, I strongly believe that no matter what global trends are, what we are living through very much depends on what ad-hoc situation inside the country is. If for decades we experience challenges with good governance, corruption, lack of democratic reforms, we cannot expect much success just because of digitalization. To fully benefit from opportunities which digital era brings to us, we should first ensure that the good governance is in place with the rule of law.”
The panel discussion was moderated by Praskovja Bystrova, VP for Strategic Communications at StrategEast.
The presentation was attended by representatives of the European Commission, the World Bank, EBRD, OSCE, GIZ and other organizations.
