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The Heads of State and Government and representatives of the EU and its member states express their deep concern at the deteriorating human rights, democracy and rule of law situation in Belarus, deplore the continuing deterioration of media freedom in Belarus and call for the immediate release and rehabilitation of all political prisoners, an end to the repression of civil society and media and the start of a political dialogue with the opposition. The EU is also deeply concerned about reports that prisoners are denied access to their families and lawyers as well as to medical care while being put under psychological and physical pressure. The European Union has consistently offered to deepen its relations with Belarus and, while reaffirming its policy of critical engagement, reiterates that such a deepening is conditional on progress towards respect by the Belarusian authorities for democracy, the rule of law and human rights.
From EU site
The Heads of State or Government and representatives of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the representatives of the European Union and the Heads of State and Government and representatives of its Member States have met in Warsaw on 29-30 September 2011 to renew their commitment to the objectives and continued implementation of the Eastern Partnership. The President of the European Parliament and the representatives of the Committee of the Regions, the Economic and Social Committee, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development were also present at the Summit.
The Prague Summit in May 2009 launched a strategic and ambitious Eastern Partnership as a specific dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy, to further support Eastern European countries’ sustainable reform processes with a view to accelerating their politicalassociation and economic integration with the European Union. The agenda agreed in Prague contains the guiding principles of the Eastern Partnership, and the participants of the Warsaw Summit re-affirm their commitment to implement them fully.
The Warsaw Summit recognises that reinforced reform efforts serve a common interest, and need therefore to be applied in a spirit of shared ownership and mutual accountability. The Eastern Partnership is based on a community of values and principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. All countries participating in the Eastern Partnership are committed to these values through the relevant international instruments. Any European Union Member State is also committed to them through the Treaty on European Union.
The participants of the Warsaw Summit acknowledge the European aspirations and the European choice of some partners and their commitment to build deep and sustainable democracy. They highlighted the particular role for the Eastern Partnership to support those who seek an ever closer relationship with the EU.
Much has been achieved already. Political and economic reforms have been implemented in partner countries and relations between the EU and its Eastern European partners have deepened significantly. There is more trade and economic interaction between the EU and its Eastern European partners than ever before. In order to consolidate this trend, the EU and most of its partners are engaged in negotiations on Association Agreements which will also lead to Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas as soon as the conditions are met.
At the same time, they are engaged in progressing towards increased mobility across the continent. Dialogues on visa-free regimes have been launched with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. Visa-facilitation and readmission agreements are being implemented with Georgia and similar agreements will be sought with the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Belarus.
It is part of the essence of the Eastern Partnership to engage with all strands of societies, beyond governments. The Warsaw Summit welcomes the establishment of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, as well as the increased role of civil society, through the Civil Society Forum. It welcomes the creation of an Eastern Partnership Business Forum and of the Conference of Regional and Local Authorities of the Eastern Partnership.
Recognising and welcoming the progress made so far, the participants of the Warsaw Summit underlined that much remains to be done to reach the goals of the Eastern Partnership, including by adapting existing instruments of co-operation. In this regard, they welcomed the publication of the Communication of the High Representative and the Commission on the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy. Greater differentiation and mutual accountability will allow individual partners to better meet their aspirations, needs, and capacities. According to these principles, the pace of reforms will determine the intensity of the cooperation, and partners most engaged in reforms will benefit more from their relationship with the European Union, including closer political association, deeper gradual economic integration in the EU Internal Market and increased EU support. This entails support for civil society and social and economic development, as well as comprehensive institution-building, strengthening respect for human rights and the rule of law, greater market access, increased EIB financing in support of investments and greater facilitation of mobility in a well-managed and secure environment. The resolution of conflicts, building trust and good neighbourly relations are essential to economic and social development and cooperation in the region.
The participants agree that the Eastern Partnership must be significantly strengthened and commit to stepping up its implementation, with the objective of building a common area of democracy, prosperity, stability and increased interactions and exchanges. They also agree that the achievements and the progress of the Eastern Partnership must bring direct and clearly perceived benefits to the citizens of partner countries, and they commit to enhancing their efforts to make the Eastern Partnership visible to all.
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The Heads of State or Government and representatives of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, the representatives of the European Union and the Heads of State or Government andrepresentatives of its Member States, are committed to the success and the development of the Eastern Partnership, and have therefore agreed to the following:
1. Adeeper bilateral engagement: Political association, Socio-Economic integration and Mobility.
2. Participation in EU programmes and Agencies and enhanced sector cooperation.
3. Strengthening of multilateral co-operation.
Full statement – Warsaw Summit – 29-30 September 2011
EUBAM and SECI Center team up for BRUT project.
27 Sep 2011
Project BRUT, an initiative of the SECI Center, to which the European Union Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine (EUBAM) has become a partner, was launched in Odessa.
A project covering multiple levels of law enforcement activities, such as countering drug trafficking, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction, developing integrated border management, BRUT additionally aims to strengthen the customs capabilities in the major sea ports of the Black Sea region, and to upgrade risk-management systems.
Those participating in BRUT – a name taken from the first letters of the participating countries, and which runs in Odessa until Friday – include representatives from SECI Center member states, specifically from the ports of Varna and Burgas (Bulgaria), Constanta (Romania), Ambarli (Turkey) and Odessa (Ukraine) itself. Observers from Moldova, and representatives from the Dutch Customs Administration, the Central Asian Regional Information and Coordination Centre (CARICC), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the US Department of Energy, will also attend.
“The BRUT project is further proof of the strong emphasis EUBAM places on international cooperation,” said the head of EUBAM, Mr Udo Burkholder, during this morning’s opening remarks. “Coordination of our efforts is vital in tackling all manner of illicit activities. We are delighted to be teaming up with the SECI Center once again for this initiative.”
“Project BRUT’s scope primarily focuses to put the foundation stone for building up a solid bridge of long term law enforcement cooperation across the Black Sea region, connecting countries and international law enforcement organizations from Europe and Asia,” stated Petros Petroff, SECI Center Deputy Director.
BRUT is a result of a 2005 initiative and a follow-up to the SECI Center’s Kalkan project, conducted in the same region in 2009, when EUBAM acted as observer. It also complements EUBAM’s Operation Phenomena, which is being carried out at Odessa and Illychevsk ports in southern Ukraine.
“Thousands of minority Poles on Friday protested a new law in Lithuania that they claim discriminates against them and could diminish their education by demanding greater knowledge of the Lithuanian language.
The protests outside Parliament in the capital Vilnius underscored the contentious issue of language rights in Lithuania, a subject that has been the cause of tension in its relations with Poland.
Ethnic Poles number about 200,000 of Lithuania’s 3 million citizens, mainly the result of shifting borders after World War II. Many of these Poles speak Polish at home and attend Polish-language schools. But the law, which passed in March and took effect in July, introduces standardized Lithuanian exams for all upper-class students, which minorities believe will put them at a disadvantage vis-a-vis native speakers….
Waldemar Tomaszewski, a member of the European Parliament from Lithuania, said the government should “postpone this law until 2018 or maintain the right for students of ethnic minorities to pass exams in their native language.”
Over the past year, the language issue has led nationalist politicians in Poland and Lithuania to trade barbed criticism. Lithuania’s Polish residents are upset that they cannot spell their name in legal documents with the letter ‘w‘ _ a prominent letter in Polish that doesn’t exist in the Lithuanian alphabet…”
Full Article – Associated Press – Taiwan News
Berlin Syndrome, Joosten’s haunting debut novel.
25 Sep 2011
«Small-town Australia in the 1950s. I grew up knowing my parents came from a place called Poland. About Poland itself Iknew very little, ignorance that remained unchanged until I was an adult.
From early on, I knew Poland was ‘‘behind the Iron Curtain’’, which I actually conceived of as just that: one long curtain made of iron stretching right down from Gdansk to Trieste. (That’s a lot of curtain hooks, I know). Couldn’t get in. Couldn’t get out. Not the people; nor information about them. If I wondered at all about Poland, I came up with blanks every time. Truth is I didn’t know what I didn’t know until much later.
Yet I’ve always had a strange sense of emptiness, of a prison without walls, of a sameness and greyness, a place of silence and stillness, of unkempt cemeteries, of places overgrown, a barren landscape locked out of time.
I’ve never lost that sense, nor sought to disconfirm it. And within a few pages of starting Berlin Syndrome, it was with me again.
Melanie Joosten’s haunting debut novel is set in 2006 in the east of the once-divided German city. Pretty quickly you pick up on the ambience – the peculiar character of life in an ex-Soviet satellite.
The Russians are gone. The wall is down, sold off in thousands of fragments. But a frisson of the old Iron Curtain remains…».
Review – Ruth Wajnryb – The Sydney Morning Herald – September 24th, 2011.
Israel, a new republic of USSR.
22 Aug 2011
Life in Israel has changed after the arrival of the immigrants from the Soviet Union. They brought in high culture and entrepreneurial spirit. “For many years we joked that Israel has become the 51st U.S. state, but instead we have become one of the republics of the USSR,” says Israeli journalist Lily Galili. They “did not want to integrate, but to lead, and they changed the character of the country.”
US president Bill Clinton called the Russian-speaking Israelis an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. The Russophone party Our Home – Israel have strong influence on internal political life.
Article – Harriet Sherwood – The Guardian
Baltic energy security. EU funds from Brussels.
20 Aug 2011
“Lithuania seems to start realizing the projects leading toward energy security and reduction of dependence on one supplier (Russia). These projects (energy connections with Poland and Sweden, a planned gas pipeline between Lithuania and Poland etc.) will be realized with the EU assistance as part of the Baltic Energy Market Interconnection Plan (BEMIP).
This EU plan can be divided into two parts: development of the electricity sector and development of the gas sector. The latter is relevant in considering the construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in the eastern Baltic Sea region. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland are still isolated from the integrated EU gas supply system. According to BEMIP these states are referred to as a single segment, therefore one of the key goals is their integration into the EU gas supply system.
All three Baltic States declared their willingness to construct LNG terminals. Lithuania is determined to build a small-size terminal independently, i.e. without the EU’s financial assistance. Its capacity could be 2-3 billion cubic meters of gas per year (primarily for the internal use). The so-called Kiaules Nugara (Pig’s back) island in the Kursiu Lagoon (close to Klaipeda) has been chosen for the construction of the terminal. Lithuania has selected the US company “FluorInternational” as lead adviser for preparation and implementation of the project….more”
Article – Rimvydas Ragauskas – Geopolitika
Giuseppe D’Amato Travel to the Baltic Hansa, Greco&Greco, Milano, 2004.
During Euro 2012 Poland will issue Schengen visas to Ukrainian citizens if they have the tickets for football matches. The decision was taken after consultations between the two MFA. Joint consular offices will help citizens attending football matches abroad.
In 2010 Poland issued the 33% of all Schengen visas given to Ukrainian citizens in Ukraine and 14,487 in the first six months of 2011. Warsaw supports Ukraine’s efforts aiming at further liberalization of the visa regime with the European Union.
The Wall at Potsdammerplatz
“Former German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was known not to mince his words when it came to the Soviets and their allies. He labelled the communist superpower the “deadly enemy,” called Kremlin Chief Nikita Khrushchev “a brutal fighter” and referred to East Germany as a “concentration camp.”… The catholic Adenauer had never liked protestant Prussia. As Cologne’s mayor in the 1920s, he used to close the curtains of his train compartment as soon as he crossed the Elbe river, the border to Prussia, while travelling to Berlin. He disliked what he called the “Asian steppe” on the other side of the river…
Released documents show that the chancellor was pursuing a different idea. The US should offer the Soviets a swap in secret negotiations: West Berlin for the state of Thuringia as well as parts of Saxony and Mecklenburg. He made the suggestion to Secretary of State Rusk a few days before the construction of the Wall started.
Had Adenauer got his way, the cities of Schwerin and Leipzig would have become part of Federal Republic West Germany in the 1960s rather than in 1990… Adenauer pursued the project further in the months after the Berlin Wall was built, and broached it to President John F. Kennedy…”
Article – Klaus Wiegrefe – Spiegel – Germany.
100 years since the birth of Milosz.
30 Jun 2011June 30th, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nobel Prize winning poet Czeslaw Milosz. Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski has inaugurated an International Centre of Dialogue in an estate in Krasnogruda, close to the Lithuanian border. The ceremony was attended by the poet’s son, Anthony Milosz, and by representatives of Polish and Lithuanian governments. The house belonged to the family of the poet’s mother.
University of California
Czeslaw Milosz was born in present-day Lithuania, to partly Polish, partly Lithuanian parents, and was brought up in the multinational milieu of Vilnius. He graduated from the University of Vilnius with a degree in law. In 1951, Milosz appealed for political asylum in Paris, then in 1960, he moved from France to the United States. He taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. After the fall of communism, the poet returned to Poland and spent the last years of his life in Krakow, where he died in 2004, at the age of 93.
His best known work was The Captive Mind, which looked at the treatment of intellectuals under communist rule. His poetry was widely acclaimed internationally, but it was not until 1973 that his work was translated into English, allowing it to be appreciated by a wider audience.
For Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite laying a memorial plaque at Vilnius University the poet’s work is a testament to Polish-Lithuanian solidarity. The most important event of the Milosz Year was the Literary Festival, which took place in Krakow from May 9th to May 15th .
Milosz’s Year – Site.
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