Established at the Eastern Partnership Prague Summit in 2009, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum (CSF) is an integral part of the Eastern Partnership programme and creates an important and institutional platform for civil society organisations to monitor and discuss developments in strengthening democracy and developing human rights in the six partner countries. [34] The CSF consists of six national platforms and five thematic working groups represented by an annually elected Steering Committee of 13 members. The CSF meets annually to discuss the latest developments and define its work programme. The first meeting took place in Brussels in 2009. The last three meetings were held in Batumi in 2014, Chisinau in 2013 and Stockholm in 2012. [35] Russia`s military occupation of Crimea has inadvertently served as the most effective and effective incentive for the Eastern Partnership countries to double their European commitments, according to many analysts. Ukraine`s transitional government is expected to sign an association agreement in early 2014. And EU Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle recently announced during a trip to Tbilisi that the Association Agreement between Georgia and the EU could be signed by the end of March. Moldova is expected to sign one later this year.

Thanks to a new generation of association agreements, the EU has presented concrete ideas for each Eastern Partner Country. These replace the partnership and cooperation agreements concluded with partner countries at the end of the 1990s. Visa facilitation and readmission agreements promote the mobility of citizens of Eastern Partner countries through visa facilitation and contain rules for managing the return of irregular migrants through readmission agreements. Eastern Partnership partner countries are among the first to benefit from Mobility Partnerships that help their citizens move around in a safe environment in Europe. The signature will depend on Ukraine`s ability to demonstrate decisive action and tangible progress against the benchmarks set out in the Council conclusions of December 2012, which address, inter alia, the need to reform the judicial system. The signing of such an agreement would be a positive signal for an intensification of economic and trade relations between the EU and Ukraine, but also for enhanced cooperation on good governance. In June 2008, the European Council invited the Commission to prepare a proposal for an Eastern Partnership (EAP) to support regional cooperation and strengthen the EU`s relations with its eastern neighbours. The Forum contributes to the implementation of flagship projects that monitor and facilitate the democratic transition in the Eastern Partnership region and provides direct input and submits written opinions and recommendations in the early stages of policy-making in both the Eastern Partnership and the EU, conducts advocacy campaigns at critical moments and monitors the implementation of EU partner countries under the Eastern Partnership. Association.

Starting in 2014, the Forum supported two flagship initiatives, including the Eastern Partnership Media Freedom Index and the Eastern Partnership Integration Index. As regards its previous lobbying, the Forum succeeded in securing more funding for civil society under the Eastern Partnership and contributed to the development of the EU roadmap for the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in 2013. [36] The EU has suffered significant setbacks in signing association agreements since Russia began using its trade and energy influence last year to pressure partner countries to join its nascent Eurasian Union. In September 2013, Armenia announced that it would refrain from signing an EU trade agreement in order to join the Eurasian customs union. Ukraine followed in November. Russian pressure on Georgia and Moldova also intensified after the Vilnius summit. (Belarus, already a member of the Eurasian Union, has no right to enter into a trade association agreement with the EU, and oil-rich Azerbaijan has little to gain from concluding one, according to experts.) In 2013, then-President Viktor Yanukovych reported that Ukraine would meet the EU`s conditions to sign a trade association agreement before the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in November 2013. Moscow then persuaded Yanukovych to change course with a carrot-and-stick tactic: his threats to impose unilateral trade sanctions and disrupt critical energy supplies were acidified by $15 billion loan offers and a 33 percent cut on gas imports. Yanukovych`s about-face has sparked weeks of escalating protests in Kiev, a change of government and Russia`s continued military occupation of Crimea. Some analysts attribute the shortcomings of the Eastern Partnership to the EU`s overly technocratic approach to the neighbourhood policy.

Instead of clearly stating the raison d`être of the Eastern Partnership, the EU has focused on association agreements and regulatory convergence in its relations with partner countries. As a result, partner citizens did not urge their governments to push eastern Partnership reforms more vigorously, as the benefits remained opaque. Countries such as Georgia and Moldova, which have explicitly expressed interest in deepening relations with Europe, have not been given sufficient reasons to undertake costly reforms; EU membership was not included in the offer. In March 2014, the new Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced that he was ready to sign the Association Agreement with the EU. The Eastern Partnership is a specific Eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). Under the ENP, the EU is working with its southern and eastern neighbours to achieve the closest possible political association and the highest level of economic integration. The initiative, launched at the Prague Summit on 7 May 2009 on the proposal of Poland and Sweden, aims to deepen cooperation between the EU, Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus. The Eastern Partnership updates the legal basis between the EU and the EaP countries by replacing previous Partnership and Cooperation Agreements and introducing the Association Agreement, as well as by creating a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area and visa liberalisation between the EU and partner countries. Following Ukraine`s decision not to sign the Association Agreements at the Vilnius Summit last autumn (and the weeks of protests that followed), European decision-makers began to question the current conditions and management of the Eastern Partnership. .