Ukraine in the EU's Eastern Partnership policy 2009-13. A case of Czech foreign policy making analysis

Abstract

On May 7th, 2017 eight years have passed since the Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy of the European Union (EU) was launched at the first summit of EaP in Prague. The policy was designed as a platform to deal with six countries of Eastern Europe and Southern Caucasus - the most important and pro-European among them being Ukraine. Under the new policy framework, the East European partners were supposed to promote security, stability and prosperity thanks to cooperation with the EU on the bilateral and multilateral bases. Looking at the current state of EaP, it is obvious that the EU's policy mostly failed, or at least did not deliver its goals fully. The EU's eastern neighbourhood was not turned into area of security, stability and prosperity as best visible at Ukraine fighting its undeclared war against Russian Federation. Due to its numerous problems, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) went in 2015 through an extensive review that has been implemented since then (European Commission 2017).