One Day Left Till Riga Summit...

• 05.20.2015, 20:12
•  Europe,  World

There is only one day left till Eastern Partnership’s 3-rd Summit which will take place tomorrow in Latvia’s capital Riga. There are many predictions worldwide about the summit’s possible results that present opinions and comments from political experts concerning this prominent event.

According to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the 3 EaP countries, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, have the right to aspire to the European Union membership. Tusk told Radio Free Europe, that his job was now to manage these expectations, because these three countries had previously accused the EU for failing to commit to membership. Several governments of the EU member states are reluctant to make such a commitment in the final declaration of the Riga meeting.

However, Donald Tusk expressed hope that Georgian and Ukrainian citizens would enjoy visa-free travel to the EU “as early as next year,”  which means that on this particular issue the governments of the two countries would have to return empty handed to Kiev and Tbilisi. Meanwhile, Minsk may be granted a visa-facilitation deal with the EU.

As for the expectations from the EaP’s Summit, the President of Georgia told that he hoped they would see very principled steps in Riga, which would aim at strengthening peace and stability in Europe, informs geotimes.ge.

According to Giorgi Margvelashvili, the government did a good job in terms of implementation of visa-liberalization commitments in a very short period of time.

"The government, parliament and our society did a great job in a very short period of time and clearly showed to European partners the main aim of the Georgian political establishment. They made it clear that the European choice and the European integration process are clearly dominated in our politics, government and parliament. A serious job was done and I am sure that we will get an adequate response at the Riga summit", - said the President.

He expressed confidence that Georgia will not delay implementation of the rest commitments.

"Our European partners have concrete and specific criteria for evaluation of the efforts. It is important that we are talking about visa-liberalization process. The talk is not general and is linked to very specific details. Georgia has already fulfilled part of commitments, but a certain period of time is still needed.

In the context of tomorrow’s Summit in Riga, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also expressed its view as one of the initiators of the Eastern Partnership. In Warsaw they believe that it is very important at the summit to discuss the post-Eastern Partnership agenda – what do we want to do further? And of course there is a need to clearly acknowledge the European choice and aspirations of the partners who have made significant progress on their European paths, namely Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova.

As neweasterneurope.eu reports, recognizing the principle of territorial integrity is another important issue that Poland would like to have inscribed into the declaration at Riga.

Anyway, the Riga summit is unlikely to deliver much in terms of concrete new policy. There will be surely many minor agreements both on bilateral and multilateral level, but any global changes, according to international media, will not happen.