The magnitude of the pandemic in EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries is still not fully known. There are many indications that the situation in the region may be worse than the official data suggest. Also, crisis management responses by national governments have been different across the region: as Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine declared national states of emergency in the last weeks, authoritarian leaders of Belarus and Azerbaijan have tried to downplay the crisis. Meanwhile, the EU Commission and the international community have rushed in to help.
In this Online Discussion, we will discuss the evolving situation in various Eastern Partnership countries, the challenges they face, and how the EU could step in with a leading role in the urgent international assistance to avert a major regional crisis or mitigate its most severe effects.
Speakers:
Katarina Mathernova, Deputy Director General at DG NEAR, European Commission
Dr Stefan Meister, Head of South Caucasus Office, Heinrich Böll Foundation
Dr Cristina Gherasimov, DGAP Research Fellow
Moderated by:
Milan Nič, Head of DGAP’s Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia