Reimagining labour in the Eastern Partnership
The application of AI remains a fledgling aspect of working life in the countries of the Eastern Partnership. While there have been numerous promising developments, the region still lags behind its western partners. Overcoming this gap could provide the area with new labour opportunities in a sphere possessing almost limitless horizons.
February 23, 2026 -
Ana Diakonidze
Mariami Paposhvili
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AnalysisIssue 1-2 2026Magazine
Artificial intelligence and platform-based labour are rapidly reshaping employment patterns across the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. AI-enabled systems and digital labour platforms are no longer marginal innovations: they are increasingly embedded in everyday work processes, influencing how tasks are allocated, performance is monitored, and income is generated. These transformations are occurring where labour markets and institutions are already fragile and characterized by high levels of informality, skills mismatches, outward migration, and limited enforcement of labour regulation. This has given technological change in the EaP a distinct social and institutional trajectory.
The central risk for the region is not large-scale technological unemployment but the normalization of algorithmically mediated precarity. In the absence of coherent regulation, social dialogue and inclusive reskilling strategies, digital tools tend to intensify work; shift risks onto workers; and disperse responsibility across platforms, contractors and opaque algorithmic systems. For EaP countries, the key challenge is therefore not whether AI and platform work will continue to expand, but whether labour market institutions can respond quickly and coherently enough to ensure that technological change supports decent work rather than reinforcing existing inequalities.
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