Learning from Past Experiences: Ways to Improve EU Aid on Reforms in the Eastern Partnership

With financial and political crisis looming over Ukraine, the region of the Eastern Partnership is facing a period of increasing uncertainty. How effective is EU aid on reforms as a tool for easing and encouraging the transformation process in those countries? Does aid translate into real changes in the lives of ordinary people, or are reforms on paper merely a façade for corrupt and disengaged governments? And what lessons for the future can be learnt from the EU’s seven-year experience of aid delivery in the East?