Successes and failures in the implementation of the Eastern Partnership objectives in a changing security environment

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) is a Polish-Swedish initiative to strengthen cooperation between the European Union (EU) and its eastern neighbours in both bilateral and multilateral dimensions. The programme was inaugurated in May 2009; as the eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), it was intended to help initiate or accelerate the political and economic transformation of the partner countries and bring them closer to the EU, thus stabilising the eastern neighbourhood of the EU and strengthening European security. However, over the past twelve years, the security environment of the EU and the region of Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus have undergone significant transformations, and new challenges and threats have emerged requiring active measures to counteract them effectively. Consequently, the initial goals and objectives of the EaP were updated. The aims of this paper are to analyse the new objectives of the Eastern Partnership proposed by the EU in the context of the changing security environment and closer relations with the eastern neighbours of the EU, and to show the prospects for further development of the eastern dimension of the ENP.