Europe Betrays Its Mission in Prague

The much-anticipated Prague Summit between the European Union and our eastern partners was a flop. The eastern partnership declaration published last Thursday is not worth the paper it was printed on.

The EU has once again taken a bold proposal -- initially designed by Sweden and Poland -- and turned it into seven pages of ramble. It was a sad day for all. The EU is clearly without good ideas and without the bold leadership necessary to do what is needed in the east. The countries invited to the summit -- Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan -- are all European. Yes, they are also Caucasian, Caspian, and Black Sea nations, but Europeans nonetheless. So why was a membership concept for these countries missing from the document?

Strategic thinking was never a European forte. American think-tankers poke fun at their European counterparts for superbly managing day-to-day affairs but never quite getting the big picture.

In Prague we definitely missed the big picture.

The EU is a project in the making, which is why we have an enlargement policy, which has been the single best tool for reuniting the Continent. It has turned Europe into the biggest market in the world, and it has injected dynamism into the European economy. Now, it seems, someone wants to reverse this progress and halt enlargement.

... Europe owes a new draft document to its eastern partners spelling out an integrated approach aimed at creating the Europe of the 21st century: whole, united and free.

We began this project in the 1940s, shortly after the end of World War II. A major breakthrough was achieved in the 1990s with the fall of the Iron Curtain, which then led to the big bang enlargement -- the first of its kind -- in 2003, when 10 central and east European states joined the EU. Our next job is to finish this story, which means welcoming into Europe Turkey and the Balkan and eastern countries.

Mr. Grgic is an independent investor in the Balkans and the Caucasus, and the founder of the Institute for Strategic Studies.

.This article appeared in
Belarusian Review, Vol. 21, No. 2
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