The just-concluded Riga summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership delivered a clear message: the EU has no desire to offer any meaningful prospects of membership to the six partners (though only three, Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia, are really in play). Without this overarching inducement, the Eastern Partnership will soon degenerate into another exercise in bureaucratic futility.In Riga there was in effect a seventh state engaged in the process, one that is not a partner and has no interest in becoming one: Putin’s Russia. Europe’s leaders, however, could not allow themselves to admit the virtual presence of this 800-pound gorilla …read more
Source: The American Interest
