MOSCOW, February 9. /TASS/. The success of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership program is questionable but the project in general is more alive than dead, Russian Permanent Representative to the European Union Vladimir Chizhov said on Tuesday.
"I wouldn’t say it is a complete failure. It is more alive than dead. But it cannot be called a success," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel commenting on the Polish foreign ministry’s statement on the program’s failure.
The Eastern Partnership project, like the Union for the Mediterranean, an intergovernmental organization, stem from the European Union’s neighborhood policy which "has recently been revised towards more pragmatism," Chizhov said, adding that this fact had told on the Eastern Partnership’s outcome.
Poland’s Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said earlier the Eastern Partnership project was a wrong concept as giving no real chances for the European Union membership.
Set up in 2008, the Eastern Partnership is a European Union’s multiparty program for regional cooperation with six post-Soviet states of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. It was initiated by Poland and supported by the Baltic states and Sweden. Shortly after the program was adopted, some European media said it was meant to get the post-Soviet republic out of Moscow’s influence zone, although its officially declared aim was partnership with the European Union. By now, only Kiev, Chisinau and Tbilisi are actual participants in the program.