Dirk Jan Kop, Special Representative for Europe and the Eastern Partnership at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gave a guest-lecture on 30 September 2013 to Junior Diplomats from South-Eastern Europe about the relation between the EU and the countries of the Eastern Partnership: Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. He described the current state of negotiations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours and discussed its successes, challenges and goals.

Eastern Partnership

Kop started out by addressing the raison d’être of the European Neighbourhood Policy, and more specifically the Eastern Partnership. In his opinion, the Eastern Partnership is important because it contributed to creating stable democracies on the EU’s Eastern borders through political association and economic integration. The EU engages with its Eastern partners in multilateral platforms - in which it addresses good governance, regional integration, energy security and civil society. In bilateral platforms issues like Free Trade Agreements and visas are addressed. In general the EU’s Eastern partners pursue a ‘more for more’ strategy instead of ‘less for less’ in their relations with the EU.

Questions

After the lecture was finished, the diplomats were given the opportunity to ask Dirk Jan Kop some questions. The group was able to ask a number of well thought through questions, to which Kop provided equally interesting answers. All in all, a fruitful discussion ensued. The lecture, in the words of the director of the Clingendael Academy, Ron Ton, provided the diplomats with some food for thought.