The promise of the Eastern Partnership is not dead yet

In the context of the current crisis with Russia, can the European Union’s Eastern Partnership be able to recover some of the promise it had at the time of its founding? To what extent can it change without change inside the EU itself? Certainly, what the EU needs is not hard power but a hard edge.

In the midst of the greatest security crisis to engulf Europe since the height of the Cold War, the sixth summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership on December 15th last year might easily be dismissed as a non-event. Whilst relations between Russia and the six members are a matter of high drama across Europe, the partnership attracts no more attention than a non-speaking part in a play. Provocative and discordant on most subjects, the international commentariat has no difficulty agreeing on one thing: the partnership’s irrelevance.