Working Group on the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood

Participation of Janis A. Emmanouilidis, Stavros Costopoulos Research Fellow at ELIAMEP, in the first meeting of an international working group discussing the future relationship of the EU with the countries in its Eastern neighbourhood, which was held  in Berlin on December 4, 2008. Following the war between Georgia and Russia in August 2008 and the initiation of the EU’s “Eastern Partnerhip”, the Union’s policy towards its Eastern neighbours has become one of the core interests of EU foreign policy. The group, which was initiated and invited by the Polish think tank demosEUROPA and the Bertelsmann Foundation, will publish a joint report covering various dimensions of the future relationship between the EU and its Eastern neighbourhood in early 2009.

Participants of the first meeting included: Janis A. Emmanouilidis, Stavros Costopoulos Research Fellow, ELIAMEP; Isabell Hoffmann, Bertelsmann Foundation, Guetersloh; Iris Kempe, Director of the Regional Office South Caucasus of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tbilisi; Ivan Krastev, Chair of the Board of Directors, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia; Zaki Laïdi, Director of Research, Centre for European Studies, Sciences Po, Paris; Cornelius Ochmann, Bertelsmann Foundation, Berlin; Maria Sadowska, head of programme “Europe in the World” at demosEUROPA, Warsaw; Pawel Swieboda, President of demosEUROPA, Warsaw; Monika Wohlfeld, independent consultant, former Deputy Director of the OSCE Conflict Prevention Centre, Vienna; and Jan Zielonka, Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.