Members
The Eastern Partnership consists of the post-Soviet states: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and the European Union. There was much debate over whether to include Belarus, which the EU considers to be an authoritarian dictatorship. Belarus was eventually invited to participate due to EU concerns of too much Russian influence.
On 30 September 2011 Belarus seemingly withdrew from the initiative because of: "unprecedented discrimination" and a "substitution" of the principles on which it was built two years ago. However three days later Foreign Minister of Belarus Sergei Martynov refuted this.
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- European Union
- Georgia
- Moldova
- Ukraine
Read more about this topic: Eastern Partnership
Famous quotes containing the word members:
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)
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“The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)