EU summit relocates to Russia

Date: 27/02/1997

By Elizabeth Wise

THE mountain will come to Mohammed next month, or at least to Boris Yeltsin.

Since the Russian president is still not well enough to travel, the venue for the EU-Russia summit has been moved from Brussels to Moscow.

Dutch Premier Wim Kok and Foreign Minister Hans van Mierlo will be joined by European Commission President Jacques Santer and Foreign Affairs Commissioner Hans van den Broek in their pilgrimage to Yeltsin's office on 3 March.

The agenda is still sufficiently general to allow talk of almost anything, and Dutch officials say the European team will leave it up to the Russians to lead the discussion.

They say it will be “far more useful” for the presidency to hear the Russians' views on Union enlargement, work towards a Common Foreign and Security Policy and other key issues. Van Mierlo will then take the Russian ideas to an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers planned for March.

Moscow, which complains increasingly about a lack of dialogue with the Union, is likely to seize this chance to have its say with both hands. Ivan Ivanov, Moscow's deputy ambassador to the EU, told the European Press Agency this month that Russians would prefer to be “fully-fledged partners, not merely clients vis-à-vis the EU”.

Ivanov and other Russians are pushing for the start of promised negotiations on a free trade area encompassing both sides. They fear that if the Union expands to take in the countries of central and eastern Europe, Russia will lose out on EU market share.

Ivanov cites the example of Austria, Finland and Sweden's accession to the Union, pointing out that while Russian exports to those countries rose by 17&percent;, Russian imports from the trio also increased, by 51&percent;.

If that happens again after the next round of EU enlargement, Moscow will want compensation. But Ivanov says Russia would prefer free access to the expanded market rather than mere compensation.

The promise of a free trade area, argue the Russians, would also help domestic reforms take hold. Moscow wants to industrialise, expand its service sector and shake off the old mantle of a command economy.

The Union has held out the prospect of a free trade area to Russia for quite some time, but its promises are beginning to ring hollow. EU member states, notably France and Germany, have yet to ratify the bilateral Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), which means a series of programmes are on hold. Moscow is now resigned to the fact that the PCA cannot come into force until the second half of this year.

The Yeltsin administration also frequently complains about Union schemes to block Russian imports through strict certification rules and technical standards which Russian industry cannot meet.

Moscow trade officials are working on those “technical barriers to trade” with their counterparts at the Commission and preparing for their next session in March.

“Of course, this industrialisation will take time,” says Ivanov. “But diplomacy ought to prepare the ground.”