Horizontal Objectives of EU Programmes and the Socio-Cultural Context for EaP Members

As the Eastern Partnership (EaP) was founded in 2009, between European Union (EU) and six countries from Eastern Europe, its main goal was to create adequate conditions for economic integration, social and regional development of the EaP country members. Based on the same principles as the EU was built, international law and fundamental values (e.g. human rights, freedom, democracy, rule of law), sustainable development and also good governance, the EaP was regularly analysed and renewed (once every two years) in order to better respond to the needs of Eastern European countries. Even so, while the economic context was especially considered, there are still some actions to be undertaken with regards to socio-cultural factors. Therefore the aim of the paper is toanalyse the socio-cultural context of the six Eastern European EaP members (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) in order to make recommendations regarding their absorption capacity when integrating the horizontal EU objectives into the funding neighbourhood instruments. Our main research question is: what is the right approach for developing operational funding programmes (individual/bilateral or partnership/multilateral participations) for EaP members: is it by maintaining the EU horizontal objective orby adapting these objectives from the beginning considering the socio-cultural context?