Brussels, 19/03/2009 (Agence Europe) - The European Council will, on Friday 20 March, give the political go-ahead for the Eastern Partnership. The Partnership could, then, be launched officially at the start of May at a special summit with the heads of the six countries involved: Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and possibly Belarus. The issue of how this new policy is to be funded will not be settled by heads of state and government, so the Council will have to come up with an answer before the first projects can be launched.
There is “broad political agreement” within the Council over the Eastern Partnership, “but further discussion will be needed to settle a number of points,” including the budget, said Czech Foreign Minister and current President of the Council Karel Schwarzenberg on Thursday at a conference in Brussels organised by the European Policy Centre (EPC). The outstanding points are unlikely, however, to upset the timetable of the Czech Presidency, which wants to convene an Eastern Partnership summit in Prague on 7 May, Schwarzenberg said. He made it clear that the Czech Presidency backed the European Commission proposal of a budget of €600 million over the next four years. Of these €600 million, €250 million will come from a re-arrangement of funds already available under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), with the other €350 million having to be found from the reserves from column 4 of the EU budget (external relations). While not wishing to cast any doubt on the importance of the Eastern Partnership, a number of EU Mediterranean member states, led by France, stress that the “2/3 of the ENP budget for the South and 1/3 for the East” rule, set when the EU financial perspective for 2007-2013 was adopted, has to be adhered to, Schwarzenberg confirmed. However, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, who also took part in the EPC conference, was categoric. “The €600 million is the strict minimum,” he said, arguing that the Eastern Partnership (initially a joint Polish-Swedish idea) “can only have an impact if it has enough money”. Sikorski went even further. He hoped that the financial institutions (ERDB, the EIB, etc) and member states would commit themselves to providing additional national funding for this policy. “Poland, at any rate, is prepared to free up substantial national funding” to further boost the Eastern Partnership, and “Sweden will do the same,” he announced (also hoping for a similar gesture from Germany). Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Hryhoriy Nemyria also urged the EU to put in sufficient budgetary resources for the Eastern Partnership, “otherwise the high expectations (of the beneficiary countries) will not be met,” he said. Both Nemyria and Sikorski called for one or more “coordinators” to be appointed to prepare and supervise projects and ensure coordination across the board of Eastern Partnership activities. Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, also present at Thursday's EPC conference, rejected this idea. Appointing a coordinator from outside the Council and the Commission would, she said, duplicate the coordination work carried out by the Commission. She announced, however, measures to better coordinate the management of the Eastern Partnership within the Commission.
Schwarzenberg also said on Thursday that the Czech Presidency had not yet decided whether or not a Belarusian representative would be invited to Prague. “We believe that Belarus should be strongly involved in the Eastern Partnership, but the extent of this involvement will depend on how it conducts itself on democracy and human rights,” he said. Whether or not a Belrusian representative attends the Prague summit will depend on the steps President Lukashenko takes (or does not take) in the “coming weeks”, Schwarzenberg said. (H.B./transl.rt)