FRANCE DOESN’T WANT EU TO GRANT SO MUCH MONEY TO EX-SOVIET STATES

Poland and France were at odds Thursday over a European Union Commission plan to grant EUR600 million in aid to six ex-Soviet states, with Paris fearing it would lessen the pot for Mediterranean nations, Easy Bourse reports. The commission has proposed the funding to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine under the European Union's "Eastern Partnership" project, an initiative by Poland and Sweden to counterbalance the Mediterranean partnership plan championed last year by France. The Eastern Partnership was one of the issues being discussed at a two-day E.U. summit in Brussels, which got underway Thursday. "We've seen how fragile the region is, both during the Georgian crisis, the gas crisis and the economic crisis," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said. The EUR600 million "is the absolute minimum that we can do to try to help the region stabilize," he added. He pointed out that with the aid split six ways over the 2009-2013 period, it meant just EUR20 million a year for each struggling nation. If the crisis continues "according to pessimistic scenarios we will be looking at problems in billions, not millions," he warned. France however is opposed to any fixed amount being agreed at this stage. While Paris agrees in principle on the need to "reinforce" aid to the six ex-Soviet neighbors of the E.U., the bloc must "look at the concrete projects" that will be proposed, the source said. There was also the need to maintain a "balance" between funding of "two-thirds to southern nations and one third for the countries in the East." The French source said that no funding decision was expected at the current E.U. summit.

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Headlines for March 19, 2009

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Poland and France were at odds Thursday over a European Union Commission plan to grant EUR600 million in aid to six ex-Soviet states, with Paris fearing it would lessen the pot for Mediterranean nations, ...