TBILISI. May 7 (Interfax) - The European Union's Eastern partnership initiative is a response to the August 2008 events in South Caucasus.

"The Eastern Partnership initiative is really Europe's response to the August war and aggression, and we are becoming an institutional part of the EU," Saakashvili told journalists in Prague.

Georgia now has a chance to form a free trade zone with the EU after the Eastern Partnership program was signed, to triple its exports to Europe, to create new jobs, to receive hundreds of million of investments, and to resolve the visa issue with the EU this year, the president said.

"We are becoming a part of the new space. We left the CIS and were virtually hanging in mid-air, and now we are entering something that has a much larger market, far better welfare and prospects, that is why we think that this was a very decent response from Europe after the August war, but slightly delayed given events that happened and are happening," Saakashvili said.