for the partner countries, and gives them all freedom to define their national modernisation agendas. On the other hand, the Eastern Partnership undoubtedly provides a major boost to the European Union’s political attention, ambitions and means of cooperation towards its Eastern neighbours. It reflects a“change of paradigm”, 6 and taking into account the constraints of realpolitik, this should not be underestimated. After all, the Partnership has been adopted while the EU is facing rough times, characterised by ongoing uncertainties around the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, the necessary consolidation of the EU’s internal structures and workings after its major 2004 enlargement, and a public opinion that is increasingly critical vis-à-vis any further enlargement in general, and last not least the world financial and economic crisis. It is a positive coincidence that one of the two initiating countries takes the EU Presidency in the second half of 2009 – and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has clearly taken on the challenge when stating that“The Swedish Presidency will have the important task of initiating the implementation of the Eastern Partnership.” 7 The Making of the Eastern Partnership Following its enlargement by ten countries in 2004, the European Union developed a desire to define the relationship with its direct neighbours more explicitly, but below the level of a concrete membership perspective. This resulted in the formulation of the European Neighbourhood Policy(ENP), which equally addressed the EU’s neighbours in the East and the South. The ENP’s goal was to create an area of political stability and welfare encompassing the EU and its neighbours, by promoting economic exchange, the rule of law and cooperation in fields of common interest. The ENP served as a very general policy umbrella for a collection of neighbour countries with widely varying European ambitions, reform and association agendas, and whose relations with the EU continued mainly on a bilateral basis. A first German effort to create an“ENP Plus” policy in 2006, which would have introduced a specific Eastern dimension into the ENP, did not find sufficient support at that time. Things changed when the French President Nicholas Sarkozy started promoting a Union for the Mediterranean especially for the Southern neighbours, which came into being in 2008. 8 6 Cornelius Ochmann: EU Eastern Partnership: Fine, but what about Russia?. Spotlight Europe 2009/06, Bertelsmann Stiftung, May 2009, ttp://www.bertelsmhann-stiftung.de/cps/rde/xbcr/SID-158D774B-6D00C191/bst/ Engl_spotlight_EU%20Eastern%20Partnership_09-05-28.pdf. 7 Carl Bildt: Statement of Government policy in the Parliamentary Debate on Foreign Affairs, Wednesday, 18 February 2009, p. 11, http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/12/07/57/6af6d6b7.pdf. 8 For the genesis of the ENP cf. Eckhart D. Stratenschulte: Planquadrat Osteuropa. Die Östliche Partnerschaft der EU[Grid Square East Europe. The Eastern Partnership of the EU], in: OSTEUROPA 5/2009, pp. 29-44, available at http://www.osteuropa.dgo-online.org/issues/issue.2009.1243807200000. 6