The speed and pace with which the Eastern Partnership program is continuing to evolve, maintaining innovative capacity and creating further incentives for civil society development is truly remarkable, Gunter Walzenbach, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England, Bristol, told Armenian News–NEWS.am.

Asked whether Eastern Partnership program has achieved its goal, the analyst said only history will be able to tell whether it was a failure or a success.

“It intended to bring neighbours closer to the European Union and to consolidate democratic processes within their political systems. Perhaps these goals have been overambitious and the reality check over the last few months has led to a more thorough investigation of country specific results in comparison with the original ambitions,” Walzenbach said.

He believes it would be a surprise if an EU program of this range and magnitude, running over several years, has only a success story to tell.

“Instead of counting milestones and signatories to new association treaties, the steep learning curve that both the bureaucratic machine in Brussels and their counterparts in the neighbouring countries had to climb is much more important. Most policies of complex organisations experience implementation problems, external constraints and unintended consequences at least from time to time. Therefore, what is truly remarkable in the case of the partnership, in my view, is the speed and pace with which the EaP is continuing to evolve, maintaining innovative capacity and creating further incentives for civil society development despite the absence of strong enforcement mechanisms,” Walzenbach said.

The Eastern Partnership initiative, inaugurated in May 2009, was a brainchild of Sweden and Poland. It aims to strengthen partnership with six CIS states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.