On 5 December, on the sidelines of the OSCE Ministerial Council of Bratislava, the delegations of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova, signed a joint statement on the creation of a format of the EU plus the three countries for sectoral integration in transport, energy and other fields and to have full access to four liberties of the EU - free movement of goods, services, capital and labor force, reported agenda.ge. The joint statement had been handed out to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.
The statement read that 10 years since the creation of the EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) format, uniting Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, it is time a long-term strategy be drafted “which will ensure a closer cooperation of the countries with the EU.” The statement says that EU integration is the free choice of the three EU-associated states and the choice “must remain free from any influence of the third country.”
The proposal for a sectoral integration of the three EaP countries came on 5 November on a ministerial dialogue in Stockholm, when the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko called for an application of a “differentiation principle” to the three EaP front runners who have concluded Association Agreements with the EU (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova) at a recent ministerial dialogue in Stockholm.
On 14 November, the Lithuainan parliamentarian in the EU parliament Andris Kubilius presented the initiative called A New Flagship Initiative – the Trio Strategy 2030. The policy objectives of these initiatives were the following:
“The creation of the European Trio Process – a new EU soft-power instrument to improve motivation to continue reforms, which will include tailor-made more intensive instruments of cooperation with the EU and its Member States. The European Trio Process will be led by the EU institutions and a coalition of likeminded countries of the Trio Strategy 2030. The European Trio Process will replicate the one initiated in 2014 by Germany to speed up the process of the integration of Western Balkans (so called ‘Berlin Process’ initiative). The European Trio Process will have an intensive agenda of tangible projects and programs, which will take on board the best experience of increased cooperation and deeper integration from Berlin Process and the instruments of European Economic Area.”
Within the EU Commission, these initiatives are still perceived with skepticism. “Although our natural trend … is to reward your best friends, differentiation should not come at the expense of inclusiveness,“ said Luc Devigne, the director for the Eastern Partnership Programme at the EU’s diplomatic service, the EEAS. “There can be further differentiation, but we need to do two things. First, we need to keep everybody on board, both in Eastern partners and the member states and secondly, we really need to focus on what was notoriously, in consensual way, the least successful” agenda item, and that’s rule of law and good governance,” he added.
