EaP FUTURE DEPENDS ON ADHERENCE TO EUROPEAN NORMS – EU DELEGATION HEAD

Ambassador Peter Michalko, Head of the European Union Delegation to Moldova connects the future development of the Eastern Partnership with the strict adherence to European standards.

At the Tuesday’s forum dedicated to the Eastern partnership he said that 10 years ago the EaP was an absolutely new policy with certain goals – to create necessary conditions for accelerating the political association and economic integration between the EU and partnership countries. The EaP is based on fundamental values, including democracy, the law-supremacy principle, respect to human rights and freedoms, market economy, sustainable development and good public governance.

“Over 10 years of the EaP we accumulated necessary experience and made conclusions. I believe that we must focus on partnership’s successes, but not the failures, from which we still must draw lessons and transform these into advantages”, Michalko said.

According to the diplomat, the new format allowed to assess the development of member countries on the basis of the approved standards.

“Standards have long been guiding principles for the EU. If we saw that the country is moving away from its liabilities, we were able to respond to this timely”, Michalko said.

He reminded that in recent past Moldova began to move away from standards in terms of justice and democracy and this was when the cooperation started to develop on the basis of the principle “more for more” [more reforms, more support].

“In our cooperation we must all the time be guided by the trust of citizens of both the EaP and the EU, otherwise the efficiency of any partnership is questionable”, Michalko said.