Eastern partnership approved

Prague or Brussels?

Prague may no longer be the venue of the summit launching the ‘eastern partnership' on 7 May, a senior diplomat told European Voice on the margins of today's meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. Today's conclusions no longer contain a reference to the Czech capital as the location of the inaugural summit, though holding it in Prague “remains the plan”, according to a Czech spokesperson.

A participant in the summit proceedings said that two factors had forced the Czech government to reconsider its plans to use Prague as the site of the summit of 27 EU member states and the six eastern neighbours (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). One is the financial implications of holding such a large event in addition to numerous other events hosted by the Czech EU presidency during the first half year of 2009, according to this source. Those events include the first EU-US summit since Barack Obama assumed the presidency of the United States.
 
The second reason is that an EU ‘jobs summit' has been called for 7 May, the same date reserved for the eastern partnership summit. Because they will involve many of the same people on the EU side, this poses logistical and scheduling problems, and it might be easier to hold both events in Brussels, sources said.