Eastern partnership: A new dimension of the EU-Armenia co-operation

Abstract

The current policy internship project conducted at the EU Advisory Group (EU AG) to the Republic of Armenia presents a research on the new policy initiative of the European Union – Eastern Partnership (EaP). This policy was officially launched in May, 2009 Prague summit and covers six former USSR countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The current research discusses the details of the EaP, and reveals which new instruments the EU offers within this new policy as a new step of the EU-Armenia cooperation. The first introductory section of this paper presents the evolution of the contractual relationship between the EU and Armenia, as well as discusses the reasons, which had driven the EU to formulate new foreign policy agenda towards the countries of Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus. Then, the paper discusses in details the bilateral and multilateral components of the EaP and briefly presents the key working directions of the EU AG, in particular its activities directed towards facilitation of reform process in Armenia. Finally, the paper analyses the implications of the EaP for Armenia and gives policy recommendations to the Armenian side on how it can benefit most from this initiative, and to the EU side on how to provide the overall success of the EaP.