EU wil banden met Oekraïne, Moldavië, Marokko en Israël aanhalen (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU wants to "deepen" its ties with four of its neighbours - Ukraine, Moldova, Morocco and Israel - external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner i said in Brussels on Thursday (3 April).
"Based on their progress and their ambition to work more closely with us, we want to go significantly further with these four countries," she said while presenting an evaluation of the EU's policy towards its neighbours - known as the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) - over the past year.
As for the "most committed countries," Ukraine, Moldova and Morocco, the commissioner said she was going to propose an increase of the funds set aside for them for 2008 although the exact sums remain unclear.
According to the overall assessment of the ENP's implementation in 2007 published by the commission, the neighbourhood policy has "delivered" results in many areas, but the EU's partner countries still need to do more in others, such as the reform of their economies, the opening up of their markets and the fight against corruption and organised crime.
The ENP covers Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Ukraine, as well as the Palestinian Authority.
It was designed with the aim of offering EU neighbours closer - or privileged - cooperation with the bloc, but it does not foresee eventual EU membership, a fact repeated regularly by Brussels.
But referring to Ukraine, Ms Ferrero-Waldner noted: "For the future, nothing is ruled out and nothing is ruled in, the [EU] door is neither open nor closed."
Ukraine was once again critical of the tones from Brussels. Kiev has been hoping for a more positive signal from the European Commission about eventual membership.
"The ENP basic tenets do not correspond to the strategic interests of Ukraine to acquire the EU membership in the long run," a press statement said.
"The success of implementation of the EU-Ukraine Action Plan is a reflection of the general political will and persistent efforts of Ukraine to pursue internal reforms necessary to meet the EU membership criteria."
"It is not a result of the success of the ENP vis-a-vis Ukraine."
East vs South
The ENP has also been dividing EU member states. While some - particularly Central and Eastern European EU members - have been backing the eastern dimension of the policy, others have been calling for developing further the relations with southern countries.
Last month, EU leaders approved a plan put forward by French President Nicolas Sarkozy for a Union for the Mediterranean aimed at fostering cooperation with the EU's southern neighbours.
For his part, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said he would unveil proposals in June to draw Ukraine closer to the EU and boost relations with eastern countries.
But Ms Ferrero-Waldner called on Poland not to hurry with new proposals, and rather try to use existing instruments.
"We need to do more work now on what we have at the moment, before moving forward. We need to make sure that words are actually implemented in practice," she said.
"Obviously I am not excluding work on the content with our Polish colleagues, but I think we need to use what we have at the moment, it's all very new, a lot remains to be done."