ABSTRACT
Aiming to take stock of the Eastern Partnership’s (EaP) successes and failures (or, more specifically, achievements and drawbacks) over the past decade of its functioning, this chapter surveys the developments in the field, with a particular focus on EaP goal attainment. It develops an original goal-oriented framework for foreign policy and international cooperation analysis, with ‘joint goals’, objectives and salient policy issues constituting the main locus of enquiry. First, it unveils what are the main goals, as jointly set by the EU and the six EaP countries, broader contextual frameworks of salient policy issues that have shaped their cooperation agenda in 2009–2019, as well as more specific (operationalized) policy objectives, including the so-called ‘20 Deliverables for 2020’. Subsequently, this chapter evaluates policy developments, and outputs, against the backdrop of the goal-sets identified. It concludes by outlining the cooperation agenda of a post-2020 EaP, as currently suggested by the EU’s relevant policy documents.
Since 2019, the EU’s Eastern European policy in general and the Eastern Partnership (EaP) in particular have been at the crossroads of programmatic and practical rethinking, that is at the stage of revision. In May 2019, the tenth anniversary of the EaP was marked, and while there were many reasons for celebration, there was at least as much ground for critical reflection. Progress achieved in some policy fields and countries alike seemed to be oddly satisfying, whereas in others, including the EaP framework as a whole, numerous problems not only persisted, but were actually reinforced and became intertwined with other emergent challenges. In sum, ten years after its launch, the EaP still meanders in the eyes of most critical observers between success and failure.
