Horizontal Objectives of EU Programmes and the Socio-Cultural Context for EAP-members
Horizontal Objectives of EU Programmes and the Socio-Cultural Context for EAP-members

Summary/Abstract: As the Eastern Partnership (EaP) was founded in 2009, between European Union (EU) and six countries from Eastern Europe, its main goal was to create adequate conditions for economic inte-gration, social and regional development of the EaP country members. Based on the same principles as the EU was built, international law and fundamental values (e.g. human rights, freedom, democ-racy, rule of law), sustainable development and also good governance, the EaP was regularly ana-lysed and renewed (once every two years) in order to better respond to the needs of Eastern Euro-pean countries. Even so, while the economic context was especially considered, there are still some actions to be undertaken with regard to socio-cultural factors. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to analyse the socio-cultural context of the six Eastern European EaP members (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) in order to make recommendations regarding their absorp-tion capacity when integrating the horizontal EU objectives into the funding neighborhood instru-ments. Our main research question is: what is the right approach for developing operational funding programmes (individual/bilateral or partnership/multilateral participations) for EaP members: is it by maintaining the EU horizontal objective or by adapting these objectives from the beginning consid-ering the socio-cultural context?

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