Gediminas Kirkilas: The Eastern Partnership countries pay the price to Russia for their European aspirations

EaP countries are forced to pay a kind of price to Russia trying to get out of its sphere of influence and defending their European aspirations, saidGediminas Kirkilas, the Deputy Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament, Prime Minister of Lithuania (2006-2008) during the 8th Kyiv Security Forum organized by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Open Ukraine Foundation.

“Over the past few years, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine faced great challenges and difficult choices. I know that in Belarus there are certain trends in this regard. It was about the level of integration with the EU they wanted to achieve. But they always felt economic or political pressure from Moscow. That is, in other words, one should always pay a certain price for European aspirations,” - he said.

As G.Kirkilas stressed, Ukraine now has become “the arena of the bloodiest and hardest struggle for defending European values”.

The Vice-Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament believes that the EU should not abandon its obligations under the Eastern Partnership and support partner countries because otherwise it “would undermine the system of European values, confidence in the credibility of the EU and its soft power in the structure of the partner countries”, or even may cause “irreversible consequences for the existence of the EU as such”. “The EU should use all the possibilities, offering the prospect of partnership to countries that successfully implement the necessary reforms,” - said G.Kirkilas.

According to him, every partner state shall have a ‘road map’, as Ukraine already does, to be able to carry out further reform process.

“The renewed partnership policy should allow for the EU to intensify its cooperation with these eastern partners, structure its cooperation in the field of security and defense, in order to ensure the enlargement of resources and to strengthen the self-defense potential of these countries,” - he said.

Separately, the Deputy Speaker of the Lithuanian Parliament expressed hope that next year, at the beginning of 2016 there would be a “breakthrough with Ukraine in the field of introduction of a visa-free regime with the EU”.

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The annual international event ‘Kyiv Security Forum’, established by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Open Ukraine Foundation in 2007 is a platform for discussion of the most pressing issues concerning the security in Europe and the Black Sea region. The Forum is aimed at promoting security cooperation between the European Union and the Black Sea Region, raising awareness of the development of security among key players and strengthening the role of independent and non-governmental actors in solving security problems in Europe.