The Green Party of Ukraine welcomes the initiative of Eastern Partnership proposed by the European Union.

Eastern Partnership provides for the realistic format of productive interrelations between the EU and former USSR countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The Greens think that the Eastern Partnership is the most promising recent initiative aimed at prevention of the new rupture of Europe, improvement of the mutual understanding and trust, efficient sharing of the experience, and implementation of high standards in the lively important fields of human activity.

Eastern Partnership doesn’t provide for entry of the member countries to the European Union, but it is integrative in nature since it provides a strong impulse towards rapprochement on the basis of common values and long-term interests.

The economic, cultural and political interaction with Russia and Turkey in the context of the Eastern Partnership projects would be a positive stabilizing factor of the general European significance and also would promote in harmonization of relations among the Black Sea region countries.

The global economic crisis doesn’t bring down the urgency of the Eastern Partnership. Contrarily, within the framework of this initiative there can be developed new approaches towards shared use of intellectual, industrial and scientific resources which would promote in solving of the common problems and entry to a new level of development of individual countries and Europe as a whole.

The Greens are convinced that the economic cooperation within the framework of the Eastern Partnership shall be based on the principles of sustainable development. Responding to the challenges of time, we should elaborate a series of priorities including the energy-saving and energy-efficiency increase tasks, waste processing and material recycling, reduction of pollution and other technological influences on the environment. High environment protection standards can with mutual efforts be realized in the post-Soviet countries which nowadays experience the negative inertness of peculiarities of its historic development which would correspond to the lively interests of the citizens of these countries and all nations of the continent.

The renewed, harmonic Europe is impossible upon preservation of visa barriers which nowadays significantly impede the subsequent development of cultural and educational exchange, directly preventing the representatives of different nations from communicating. The Greens think that simplification of contacts among people is a natural need of modern Europeans and an important component of the Eastern Partnership.

The European political parties and their fractions in the European Parliament can make their contribution to formation and development of new partner relations with the eastern European neighbors of the EU. The European Greens have a long-lived experience in activity corresponding to the spirit and tasks of the Eastern Partnership. The instrumental of such activity during almost two dozens of years has been the Green East-West Dialoguе - a system of cooperation, political assistance, democratic transformation experience sharing, steady development, and environment protection with the kindred political parties, organizations and “third sector” movements as well as other public and political institutions of the countries not being the EU members.

Possessing the necessary experience and relevant political will, the Green Party of Ukraine will promote in development of the Eastern Partnership actively and will fill the same with practical meaning.