Eastbook – blog on EU Eastern Partnership

Opinions: Eastbook.eu Is Still A Portal On Eastern Partnership

Łukasz Grajewski @ 09:15, 24.01.2012

Two years ago, a group of students from the University of Warsaw thought up an idea of creating a portal focused on Eastern Europe. The concept of a website on the Eastern Partnership did not come at first and it took some time to get approval from the whole team even afterwards. However, these two years of working on, and for, Eastboook.eu, has not wiped out “Why the EaP” – the question remains valid.

Lego EU map - celebration of the starting Danish Presidency, source: European Parliament

The prime goal

Two years ago, the choice seemed to be easy. The Eastern Partnership meant a new quality and, although no actual revolution was in the air, everyone in our team had a positive attitude towards this EU initiative. First – the formula indicating the exact territorial extent was attractive. Second – it gave hope for development in spheres such as support for cultural, local and non-governmental initiatives. So, we have launched the portal on the EaP, counting on increasing interest in Eastern Europe. Yes, this has been the general idea from the very beginning: to bring closer to our potential audience people and places we have been admiring since our first travels to the east of the European Union. And yes, our duty division is not a coincidence – here the passion for a specific region decides who the chef editor of each country section is.

The true goal – showing interesting aspects of Eastern European countries and building mutual understanding among readers from different regions – sounds more approachable than complexity of the EaP programme. Nevertheless, we have in fact bonded with the initiative well enough to feel concern when clouds are starting to appear on the political horizon, meaning its present unstable status and potential problems in the future.

During the Polish Presidency, so much was going on in the sphere of contacts with EaP partners – there were forums of cooperation in all sizes, in different fields and on different scales. It will not be repeated within the framework of the Danish Presidency this year, dominated by the EU crisis and issues more significant to Scandinavian countries, for instance: environmental protection. It is understandable. The more disturbing is the fact that the official EU standpoint towards the EaP countries is transforming into passivity or even withdrawal. In terms of future development of the EaP programme, the EU politicians are spouting clichés: the lacking democracy in partner countries makes further cooperation impossible. These are not the words we expect to hear from representatives of a global power that the European Union is!

The partnership starts with “P”

There are alternative ways to merchandise the EaP programme very well indeed. In 2012, the European Council is allocating millions of Euro to the Eastern Partnership within the framework of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI). The cross-border programmes – Poland-Belarus-Ukraine and Lithuania-Latvia-Belarus – are functioning pretty well. EU funds are used for training public servants from the EaP states. This year, implementation of hundreds of other non-governmental EU-EaP projects awaits us. Furthermore, bilateral talks on introducing specific regulations are continued. Summing everything up would result in a considerable list of effective actions. If used wisely, such a list could promote a positive image of the Partnership. All that is needed is for our political representatives to demonstrate genuine political willingness.

What the Union politicians and officials will do for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine remains to be seen. We, however, will do ours. Eastbook.eu in 2012 is going to be a place full of interesting opinions and information from a growing number of authors from Europe – its Eastern and Western parts – plus more support for democratic transformation process in EaP states, more stories from their citizens, more new media, more ads about projects, scholarships and conferences useful to our readers, and, last but not least, more tools to interact and to co-create the portal. We are planning to continue developing Eastbook.eu – a project which full name contains “Partnership” not by accident starting with a capital “P”.

Translated by KD

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