ARTIKEL /ARTICLES An Urgent Challenge for Today’s Europe: The Eastern Partnership GRZEGORZ GROMADZKI T he Eastern Partnership(EaP) is the European Union’s newest program for building relations with six countries from Eastern Europe – namely, Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine on the eu ’s border, and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the Southern Caucasus. The EaP, a Polish–Swedish initiative, was officially launched in May 2009. Earlier(in 2004) there was the European Neighbourhood Policy( enp ), which embraced both Eastern Europe and the Southern Mediterranean. 1 Preceding the enp were the New Neighbourhood and Wider Europe initiatives(2002–2003), which were originally conceived for Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. To one degree or another, all of these endeavours were a response to the»big bang« enlargement of 2004/2007, when the eu took in 12 new members, almost all of them from Central Europe. Back in the 1990s the eu pursued a rather undifferentiated policy vis-à-vis the post-Soviet countries. There is a clear need for an appraisal of the EaP’s role in relations between the eu and the six partner countries. However, since the EaP is a very new policy – it has been in place for only two years – this will be a difficult assessment. Nonetheless, the first fruits of the EaP may be gathered and evaluated and certain phenomena and tendencies can already be observed, including the approach of the many parties to their mutual relations. Moreover, the basic challenges the EaP faces have already become visible. We may therefore propose solutions to ensure that this new eu policy for the six Eastern European neighbors will lead to positive results. The EaP must be viewed in the broader context of the eu ’s relations with other neighbors, global issues, and the eu ’s internal situation, which of course directly affects policy toward Eastern Europe. The question, 1. The enp embraced the following countries: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, the Occupied Pales­tinian Territory, Syria, Tunisia, and Ukraine. ipg 3/2011 Gromadzki, The Eastern Partnership 11