Swedish minister says trials of opposition members hinder Ukraine's relations with EU

Ukraine should become a member of the European community, but the trials of its opposition figures may thwart Ukraine's European ambitions, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has said.

Barroso: Bringing Ukraine and the EU closer together is a common strategic objective

President Barroso met with Ukraine's President Yanukovich and Prime Minister Azarov to discuss the way ahead in EU-Ukraine relations, especially on the new Association Agreement including a deep and comprehensive free trade area.



CESD: Azerbaijan and EU visa negotiations set

Negotiations will begin in autumn of this year on the simplification of the visa regime between Azerbaijan and the European Union, according to Vugar Bayramov, national coordinator of the EU Eastern Partnership Program in Azerbaijan and chairman of the Center for Social and Economic Development (CESD) in Baku.

Georgia to EU: Don't neglect eastern neighbourhood

The EU should move faster on free trade agreements and negotiations for visa-free travel with Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, which are 'inexpensive' policies that can be pursued in times of austerity as funding priorities shift to the southern neighbourhood, a Georgian minister has said.



Belarus at the EaP Summit in Warsaw: The Meaningless Scandal

The main reason why the second ever Eastern Partnership Summit made it to the headlines of some Western media was a Belarus-related scandal. Otherwise, the Warsaw event got extremely poor coverage by leading news agencies. That clearly points to the low priority of the Eastern Dimension in the European Neighborhood Policy and the absence of any eye-catching agenda. Had a new Belarus-related scandal not happened, the Summit would have been totally boring.

Andras Deak: EaP summit doomed to failure

The Eastern Partnership is rather unlikely to be tagged “successful”. This is why Poland should look the truth straight in the eye and focus on minimising the negative effects of a possible and entirely probable failure.

 

 

 Paving the road towards visa-free travel between the Eastern Partnership countries and the EU

 

PASOS (Policy Association for an Open Society, Prague) is an initiator and organizer of this project. This association aims to promote and protect democracy, human rights and open society values – including the rule of law, good governance, and economic and social development – by supporting civil society organizations that individually and jointly foster public participation in public policy issues at the European Union level, in other European and global structures, and in the wider neighbourhood of Europe and Central Asia.

 

The goal of the project is to create a tipping-point for the achievement of visa-free relations between the Eastern Partnership countries and EU member-states, and in the process to upgrade the legal and policy processes in the EaP countries and promote closer integration and people-to-people exchange and contacts between the Eastern Partnership countries and EU member-states.

 

The project will seek to achieve this goal by:

• raising awareness among policymakers, civil society and media in the EaP countries, and fostering national and international engagement in policy debates on reducing barriers to people-to-people exchange between the EaP countries and the EU;
• conducting comparative analysis of the experience of securing visa-free travel to the EU for other countries, especially in the western Balkans, and policy dialogue among key stakeholders in the EaP countries, drawing up strategies to agree on a country-by-country basis the core questionnaire, criteria, and needs assessment to meet the technical criteria in the visa dialogue process and/or an eventual European Commission roadmap/action plan for visa–free travel;
• policy dialogue and independent monitoring of progress towards meeting the criteria, shaping governments’ policies, legal framework and institutions to modernise practices in the fields of border security, international co-operation on migration and organised crime, and other areas necessary to foster closer integration with the EU through enhanced co-operation and visa–free travel;
• policy recommendations for EaP governments with a view to meeting the criteria, and for the EU concerning provision of technical assistance to assist EaP governments in meeting the criteria;
• advocacy at national and international level (EU member-states as well as EU institutions) for visa-free travel for EaP countries, including a strategy of promoting the positive benefits to EU members in terms of enhanced co-operation on security and cross-border crime, and dispensing myths among the wider EU public that visa regimes keep out criminal elements (“Mafia bosses do not wait in queues for visas. Ordinary citizens who have never visited Paris, Berlin or Budapest can ill afford the visa costs, yet still must wait with no certainty that they will receive a visa.”)
 
A full copy of the project’s plan, objectives, and methodologies you can here: Download this document
 
Results of a comparative readiness assessment of the Eastern Partnership countries to the visa liberalisation according to the EU criteria will be released as an outcome of the project.

 

The participants and partners of this project are:

-Caucasus Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development - Georgia
- Centre for Economic and Social Development - Azerbaijan
- Centre for Research and Policy Making - Macedonia
- European Stability Initiative - Turkey - Germany - Belgium
- Institute for Development and Social Initiative Viitorul - Moldova
- International Centre for Human Development - Armenia
- The Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies - Belarus
 
More detailed information about PASOS you can find on the official site of this organisation:
 
www.pasos.org
 
 
 

 

 

 

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