Paper Titles & Abstracts

After the biggest EU enlargement in 2004, the ring of its neighbours has changed significantly. As a response to a new situation, the European Union launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) - a tool aimed at creation of a „ring of friends", both from the Eastern and Southern direction. After few years of implementation, taking into account different levels of development as well as various expectations of neighbouring partners regarding their cooperation with the EU (especially from the Eastern border), Poland together with Sweden launched the Eastern Partnership (EaP) as an instrument to enhance cooperation with six Eastern countries - Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The main goal was to ensure the security and prosperity in the region by actively supporting reforms in neighbouring countries. It has been four years since th EaP was launched. Therefore, there are few questions that can be already asked: Did the EU guidelines meet the political reality? Do the relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours move forward? How do the Eastern neighbours perceive their participation in the EaP project? And what are the perspectives for further cooperation? These are the most important issues needed to be raised when analyzing and evaluating the main EU instrument in its relations with the closest neighbours.If there is some place in the panel on "The Central and Eastern European EU member states and EU policies towards the post-Soviet space", organizers of this panel agreed to include my presentation.