Read this article in German. For the first time in decades, citizens could choose their governments. However, the expansion eastwards created new problems for the EU.
It now shared a common border with a bunch of former Soviet states, some of them dictatorships, most of them highly corrupt. Europeans had little appetite for further expansion.
The European Neighbourhood Policy was born, and a few years later split into a southern and eastern and dimension.
The latter was called the Eastern Partnership EaP. Politically, economically and socially there are escalating differences between them, and these differences are becoming more and more difficult to reconcile. Following its war with Russia, Georgia turned towards the EU. Armenia, on the other hand, sees a protector in Moscow.
And by , Moldovans were able to travel to the Schengen area without a visa. But in Belarus, the process of relaxing visa regulations with the EU is only just starting.
