Has the Eastern Partnership been a success story for the European Union? The question, a decade after its official launch, is certainly worth asking.

Let us start where we were more than a decade ago and which led the two of us in our then capacities as foreign ministers of our respective countries to make the first proposal for an Eastern Partnership in May 2008. At that time, the European Union had developed various neighbourhood policies in different directions. There was the overall European Neighbourhood Policy since 2004 – which led France to drive plans for an ambitious Union of the Mediterranean – and there was an ambitious approach for co-operation with Russia taking place.