Thank you for your reply, and partial correction. The view you describe may be shared by some in Portugal, but certainly not by many (at least not for now). Polls (e.g. Eurobarometer) have consistently shown support for enlargement which has largely consisted of integrating Central and Eastern European countries.

“Cajoling” i.e. suporting countries facing democratic transition is something the Portuguese, because of their relatively recent experience of the same, tend to look kindly to.

But you are right that many in Portugal are determined to avoid that this would mean the EU ignoring the Southern Mediterranean and Africa, or “emerging powers” like Brazil, India or China, to which we have a close historical connection, and are a great source of interest and concern.

But certainly your core argument does deserve attention and discussion.

- B Reis: What i wrote reflects whhat many think in Portugal. i had a chance to hear quite a number of such opinions in Lisbon in Sept. 08. Technically you are right, the wording of the blog post is not perfect. but the Portuguese gov did suggest quite a number of times during its poresidency what I wrote. Also see http://www.rferl.org/content/Article/1077448.html The wording was not perfect, but the essence of what I wrote stands. And anyway there is nothing wrong with what pt thinks. They have a point that deresrevs to be understood and discussed.

Slim K: I know many complain that the eastern neighbours receive much less than the Southern neighbours (1/3 vs 2/3). But in reality the gap in per capita terms – is not as great as many think. Moldova is the second biggest per capita recipient of EU funding in the neighbourhood (after palestine) and in Georgia – if you add the post-conflict reconstruction funding – it is quite a lot of money. so the money gap is not as big per capita as it is implied.

Marcel: I thought the term solidarity emerged in the context of EU funding for the South: Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy. long before EU enlargement to the East. anyway – the point here is not about money, but about political solidarity. sending prsidents to summits is not that expensive. and new EU member states do support Southern priorities – i do not remember Lithuania or Poland blocking EU operations in DR Congo or the Middle east.

As regards Russia – Russia DEMANDS to have a special program, not to be lumped in with the beggar-countries it once ruled…

1. Mr. Sikorski is a Polish and British citizen, I would be surprised if he was also American citizen. Is he a secret agent? How could I imaginably know that???

2. Media. Read them. Apply the test I described in my previous post # 4 (I talked about English language media, I don’t know other language media)

3. Russia. And where do you gain all your knowledge about Russia?

4. Eastern Partnership. If EP is not a Partnership against Russia, then there is a simple way to prove it. Invite Russia as an observer.

To me, the answer to the question you ask in this post is simple: the level of attendance of EU leaders in Euro-Med summits reflects the direction of courting in this context – North-South. By contrast, with the eastern neighbourhood, certain EU member state leaders do not feel they need to make as much effort as in the South, for the eastern neighbours are constantly knocking on the door.

My view may seem crude and parsimonious, but EU normative and policy-making dynamics aside, this has to be factored in. Remember the 2005 anniversary summit of the Barcelona process? Only Erdogan and Abbas attended from southern Med countries.

Southern Med countries have now realised once and for all that they have very little to gain from the EU’s policy initiatives (as they stand – no agricultural access, no easier movement of people, no money, no genuine technological transfer, no conflict resolution, nothing). The EU is demandeuse on many fronts, and EU leaders’ seemingly enthusiastic attendance of the relevant summitry is but a reflection of that.

Lack of solidarity regarding the Eastern Partnership? I do tend to agree with him in a couple of cases – ambassador or minister for social affairs do seem a bit too much, or too little.

But on the others isn’t this lack of commitment largely a reflection of the poor job done by the Czech Presidency?

After all Portugal and France invested a great deal of effort to ensure the not-at-all-spontaneous show of solidarity in the case of the Africa and Mediterranean summits.

Where his lack of rigour is very clear is in his statement that “the Portuguese prime-miniser implied once that the EU has spent almost twenty years cajoling and baby-sitting the Eastern neighbours”

If you can find any such implication in the rthe FT report that Popescu himself offers as reference, please let me know where it is. To help out I add bellow the pertinent quotes where it is clear that nothing of the sort was said:

Sócrates stated that: “My intention is to convince Europe we must turn our eyes a little bit more to the south.”

He then added that “the EU had done a “good job” in stabilising its eastern neighbourhood since the fall of the Berlin Wall and that the work was continuing. But Europe’s southern flank now needed shoring up, and more co-operation was needed on issues such as migration, energy, development and human rights in the Mediterranean region.”