Russian envoy to EU sees no essence in outcomes of EU's Eastern Partnership summit
BRUSSELS. Nov 24 (Interfax) - The outcomes of the Eastern Partnership summit that was held in Brussels on Friday show that what once was presented as the European Union's landmark political and economic initiative is now losing momentum, Russian Permanent Representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov said.
"The results correspond to the expectations and confirm that, as the European Union's landmark political and economic initiative, the partnership is losing momentum," Chizhov said in commenting on the summit's outcomes.
"This is associated with a number of factors, including different attitudes toward this initiative among the sextet of targeted countries, which, by the way, the EU has already admitted openly at this stage," he said.
"So, all that's left of all this idea is just a propagandistic shell and a set of bilateral projects, for the lack of multilateral essence, primarily economic essence, which have been put under the umbrella of this Eastern Partnership to make it look successful. I am not inclined to overestimate historical significance of this event. I've read the final document. There is significantly less essence than words there," he said.
"The summit's outcomes were summed up quite impartially by one of its participants, namely head of the Belarusian delegation, Foreign Minister [Vladimir] Makei, who said that they reflected not very high expectations from this event," he said.
The 5th summit of the Eastern Partnership, an EU initiative intended to strengthen partnership with Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, was held in Brussels on Friday. The participants adopted a joint statement, in which the participants acknowledged European ambitions of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine as the associated countries and reiterated that the initiative is not directed against anyone. Attached to the statement is a list of 20 cooperation objectives that the EU seeks to attain by 2020.