Eastern Partnership - the beginnings

The Foreign Ministry of the Netherlands thinks that Russia should not make statements threatening Eastern Partnership member countries, as the EU is very attractive for such states. President of the European Political Centre in Brussels Antonio Missiroli has stated that the Eastern Partnership initiative is only one of many programmes and a very small one, which cannot much alter the reality in former Soviet Union countries. He says that only 20 out of the 20,000 staff of the European Commission are working on this programme. The Eastern Partnership's budget is only Euro 200 million for six countries, and this is not much, Missiroli says.