Hello everyone. Welcome to Europeans at Heart, a podcast created and hosted by young European ambassadors in the European Union.

I'm Mafalda, a YA based in Portugal, and today I'm here with Nadia to talk about the Eastern Partnership,

what it is, what its main goals and cooperation areas are, and some more interesting information about our SIC-CU partners.

We hope you stay with us because there is a lot to learn today. Thank you, Mufelda. Let's get started.

Tell me more about what the Eastern Partnership is and what its aims are.

Well, the Eastern Partnership is a joint initiative

which aims to deepen and strengthen relations between the European Union, its member states,

and its six eastern neighbors, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

But now they can you tell us when it all started?

Yes, the Eastern Partnership was launched at the Prague Summit in 2009, and since then it has evolved with a review

of the European Neighborhood Policy in 2015. This means that the substance of the policy has been

broadened, deepened and been adapted to changing realities. I mean, you need to change in order

to fit best with the new world relations, right?

Yes, indeed. And to achieve this, the Eastern Partnership combines bilateral and multilateral tracks in different cooperation areas that I believe Nadia will tell us more about during

today's episode. But first, let's debunk some myths about the Eastern Partnership.

Nadia, what are the first myths that people think of when hearing about the Eastern Partnership? Well, one of the first myths people think of when hearing about the Eastern Partnership

is that they think that participating in the project leads to EU membership automatically.

But this is wrong.

The Eastern Partnership is an initiative and not an EU accession process.

Its goal is to build a common area of shared democracy, prosperity and cooperation

among different areas that we will explain today.

Yes, that's right.

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