The Eastern Partnership: Some Challenges of Multilateral Cooperation
The Eastern Partnership: Some Challenges of Multilateral Cooperation

Summary/Abstract: The development of international organisations during the bipolar world and at its ends, and the progressive political development of the European Union, both challenged a particular approach of the new international or regional policies of the European Union. Hence, the multilateral cooperation gradually substituted bilateral cooperation at the international level, even though States were not always well prepared and disposed to accept the new method and its results. In its turn, the EU has substituted the bilateral with multilateral cooperation and negotiations in some of its regional programmes and is actually using multilateral cooperation to apply its policies and to achieve some of its international or regional objectives. It is the case for the Eastern Partnership, which is using the multilateral cooperation as a negotiation instrument between the EU and Eastern Partnership beneficiary states. The characteristics of multilateral cooperation (the multitude of involved actors, the multitude of interests, variables and solutions, its multi-level way to develop, etc.) make difficult the assessment of the progress and the specific role of the involved actors. This paper will focus on the EU's formal tools in the process of multilateral cooperation and highlights both the significance and limits of multilateral cooperation and of multilateral negotiations in the regional context of the Eastern Partnership, as the role of the EU as one of the parts of the process of multilateral cooperation.

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