Regional cooperation is one of the fundamental elements of any organization along with mutual agreements on different policies between the countries. Many organizations in the world are voluntarily working for the promotion of unity, peace, and mutual cooperation in the region.
The Eastern European Partnership was formed with the same mindset. The EAP is a joint initiative of its Member States and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, and the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.
The initiative was taken in 2009 with the aim to build strategic and impactful partnership based on common grounds, mutual benefits, equal roles, and to strengthen the relationship between member states. It also contributes to the vision of increasing prosperity, stability, and resilience of the EU member countries.
Partners of Eastern European Partnership:
EU and its six Eastern partners, being settled on mutual bilateral agreements, such as the association partnership, and association agendas all concluded in the four key priorities mainly focusing on stronger economic growth, stronger connectivity, stronger and smarter governance, and establishment of building a strong and progressive society by mutually collaborating on issues civil society, defense, gender equality, and strategic communication.
The Caucasus Region:
The South Caucasus is a region at the nexus of numerous geopolitical, economic, and energy interests. Currently in a complicated state, it is witnessing some of the most dangerous and complex circumstances in the world today.
The Caucasus region is mainly considered the prism for fundamental challenges of international level that include security, power and energy, transit, infrastructure and more.
The Eastern European Partnership has been putting effort in the matter of Caucasus Region as well. Regional cooperation as its primary focus, the EAP is of the aim to consolidate a community of mutual interests, practices and values.
According to the research, it has been stated at numerous events that the EAP has some critical limitations when it comes to the formation of effective-region building policies in the South Caucasus mainly pertaining to the endorsement of artificial regional labels, limited ability to balance multilateral and bilateral approaches, and poor local ownership of identity-building processes. In addition, at the same time, the EAP has brought some ground-breaking initiatives for the development and progress of this region.
It is speculated that the EAP with its performance and impactful presence will be working for the well-being, progress, and positive development of this region soon.