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The main shortcoming of the Eastern Partnership project of the European Union is that its operators were states of the so-called New Europe – Poland and Scandinavia’s Sweden, while countries of Old Europe acted as observes, with Poland and Sweden failing to carry out the profound plan conceived originally, Alexander Gushchin, an Associate Professor of Russian State University for the Humanities, said at an online press conference when responding to a question of the columnist of Panorama.am Armen Minasyan.

“One negative factor was related to the fact that common templates were used to the project, without forming a clear idea of the differences between Eastern Partnership participating states on the one hand, and the resistance Russia might offer (the crisis in Ukraine became a graphic example of that), on the other hand,” the expert said noting that the 2015 Riga summit showed that the project’s initial format has exhausted its possibilities.

Yet “the idea itself lives on and will be implemented by different – more subtle means ,” A. Gushchin noted.

“It is obvious today that the participating states are far from each other in terms of the project implementation, with Moldova making the biggest headway, but on the whole, the project – in the form it was designed - is a failure. But we cannot speak about complete failure. Important steps were taken in the ideological sphere, so to speak – such as financing of training courses, grants, development programs of some cultural and scientific institutions, which is important in the context of soft force – a direction where the West still has a definite advantage over Russia,” the expert added.

The press conference was held as part of the project called ‘Topical Dialogs about the New integration Agenda of Armenia’. The project allows Armenian reporters to get first-hand comments. The project of Region research center is supported by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. embassy in Armenia.