Next Eastern Partnership summit in Poland

The regular summit of Eastern Partnership Programme participant countries will be held in Poland in 2011, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorsky has said. At a press conference in Budapest Sikorsky mentioned that if the relaxation of visa requirements had been up to Poland or Hungary the matter would have been resolved quite quickly, but some Western European countries are creating problems.

The Eastern Partnership Programme includes six post-Soviet countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The programme envisages loosening the visa regime for citizens of those countries and cooperation in the field of energy, but does not make the countries EU membership candidates at this stage.

The first summit for Eastern Partnership countries was held in 2009 in Prague.