Stressing the need to develop a vision beyond 2013, Linas Linkevicius, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, congratulated Georgia on concluding negotiations over its Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the EU, and congratulated Moldova for making progress despite an internal crisis.

Natalia Gherman, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova, argued that her country had accomplished everything that had been inserted into its bilateral Eastern Partnership roadmap at the Warsaw Summit of two years ago. Bilateral sector-specific advances on issues such as aviation have been recorded too, she added.

Gherman argued that the most important achievement had been the finalisation of negotiations over the Association Agreement (AA) and DCFTA, both of which Moldova hopes see initialled at the Vilnius Summit. Meanwhile having successfully finished the legislation phase of the visa liberalisation action plan, Chisinau is now moving to the implementation phase.

She expressed hope that the European Commission would recommend that member states and the European Parliament consider introducing a visa waiver for Moldovan citizens in 2014.

She argued that the multinational track of the Eastern Partnership must gain in dynamism, but insisted that each country must continue to be assessed individually, stressing the importance of maintaining differentiation and the ‘more for more’ approach rather than treating the whole region as one package.

Georgia has finalised the texts of the Association Agreement and DCFTA, and although Tbilisi has not advanced far as Moldova towards visa liberalisation, it hopes to complete the first legislative stage before the Vilnius Summit, said Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs Maia Panjikidze.

The AA, DCFTA and visa liberalisation action plan are very important for Georgia and indeed the region, making Europeanisation irreversible and guaranteeing that the Eastern Partnership is a real game changer, Panjikidze argued.

Full membership of the European Energy Community is very important for Georgia as an energy transit country, she argued. Meanwhile in parallel to the AA and the DCFTA, she argued that further steps need to be taken to deepen economic integration with the goal of establishing an EU-Eastern Partnership economic area.