Eastern Partnership does not work, Austrian FM says

Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg considers that the Eastern Partnership cooperation format is no longer effective.

"The Eastern Partnership we have developed does not work. It’s gone.We have to rethink the whole conception [the] neighbourhood policy of the EU," he said in an interview with Financial Times.

"There is no vacuum. It’s either our model or someone else’s," he said, referring to the future of countries bordering the EU, such as Ukraine and Moldova.

Schallenberg urged Brussels "not to get lost in number crunching and laws and details" on the accession of new states and instead acknowledge that it needed to view admitting new members as a necessity "to combat malign Russian influence."

The Eastern Partnership program was launched by the European Union in 2009. Its main goal is the development of regional cooperation with six countries - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

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