On Monday 12 March, Johannes Hahn, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy, launched a new institutional structure for implementation of the “20 deliverables for 2020”. These were decided at the Eastern Partnership summit on 24 November last year (see EUROPE 11912) to guarantee a more results-oriented approach and on operationality, he said in Brussels as the new structure for the Eastern Partnership was launched.
“It is time for results” concerning these 20 actions, the commissioner stressed on this occasion. He went on to add: “2018 is the first year for achieving results and strengthened EU visibility”, he said, explaining that it was necessary to become “more operational and effective in order to be able to implement” the 20 concrete results.
The decision to create this new institutional structure had been officially adopted during the Eastern Partnership summit. According to a Commission press release, the cooperation structure between the member states and the Partnership countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) focuses on the efficiency of reform implementation. Hahn said: “Our common challenge this year is to deliver results by the autumn ministerial in the four key areas of cooperation”: a stronger economy, stronger governance, greater connectivity and stronger societies.
The structure composed of platforms and panels is aligned on the four priorities of the partnership. The platforms will give a more political direction to the panels of experts, who work on specific issues such as trade, rule of law or migration. At the same time, those platforms will report back to the senior officials on the panels’ activities.
Finally, the structure will strengthen the visibility of actions carried out. The commissioner specified that strategic communication would be intensified through positive examples and successes.
According to Hahn, “it is now crucial that we keep up the momentum after the Eastern Partnership summit to inject a new dynamism into the Eastern Partnership and renew our joint engagement towards comprehensive reforms in partner countries”.
The nomenclature of the new structure is available at: http://bit.ly/2Gg7F81 . (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)