A united voice would be heard in Russia

Two MEPs discuss the EU's relations with its large Eastern neighbour

The EU's economic relationship with Russia fits like a perfect marriage, Camiel Eurlings

A look at the map can be as convincing as many political arguments: the Russian Federation and the European Union are natural partners on the European continent.

What is geographically so evident is even more obvious economically. The Russian Federation has - and needs to export - what the European economies need most: primarily energy, but, in reality, most natural resources that our industries use.

In turn, the Russian Federation is more than eager to absorb what the EU economy has and offers for export: know-how and manufacturing and engineering skills.

This economic relationship fits like a perfect marriage: a combination strengthening both economies and linking Russia and the EU closer than the geopolitical situation could ever achieve.

Economics, energy, environment - from any given angle it is obvious that the partnership between Russia and Europe is of first importance for both partners and also of the highest importance for a stable political situation worldwide.

This political partnership needs a framework, objectives and instruments much more subtle, delicate and refined than a simple 'Neighbourhood Programme', built on political agreement and part of a coherent European foreign policy, the Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The practical way to reach common objectives is developing 'Common Spaces' - integrated sectors of political interaction, with as fluid and efficient a co-operation as possible. They are being developed in the fields of energy, economics, research, internal security and education.

The roadmaps towards the Common Spaces are programmed within the framework of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) that Russia and the European Union put into operation in 1997. This policy is taken on from summit to summit and permanently screened and checked by the parliamentary co-operation committee, composed of members of both the Russian Federal Assembly and the European Parliament.

The EU needs a coherent approach towards Russia and should not permanently suffer from being pre-empted, again and again, by the bilateral approaches of individual member states, where and whenever it serves a state's particular interest.

Only as a unified Europe speaking with one single voice can we formulate a coherent policy and work out the terms of the political partnership with Russia and build up pressure where we encounter political difficulties with our Russian partners - be it over human rights in Russia in general and in the North Caucasus in particular, or over the use of energy supply as means of political pressure, or over the development of civil society and the role of NGOs in Russia, or the settlement of the so-called frozen conflicts in Transdniestria and other regions, or the handling of waste management of spent nuclear fuel.

By the end of 2007 Russia will be on the threshold of membership of the World Trade Organization and our current Partnership Agreement will expire. In 2007 and 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections will take place in Russia and we will have to formulate anew the objectives, the different steps to take, the legal framework and the political instruments that we can make use of in the future relationship between the Russian Federation and the EU from 2008 onwards.

A period reaching so far into the future of EU-Russia relations needs a system of periodic checks and balances. Democratic elections and the elements of a democratic society such as free media, freedom of expression, minority rights etc should be under permanent scrutiny. It will be of decisive importance whether Russia has consolidated economically and politically.

Even if it has not done so satisfactorily by 2008, the agreement will have to envisage the degree of co-operation we would like to establish in the course of its lifetime. Exactly this vision of our long-term relations will thus be spectacularly visible at the time of the 2008 presidential election.

The crucial first question will therefore be: how democratic is the Russian Federation going to be?

This will boil down to a very simple check: will President Vladimir Putin respect the rule of law and democracy and pass on the power in the Kremlin, by means of democratic election, as provided for by the constitution of the Russian Federation? This will be a crucial test case for future EU-Russia relations.

- Dutch centre-right MEP Camiel Eurlings is a member of the European Parliament's committee on foreign affairs and chairs the delegation to the EU-Russia Parliamentary Co-operation Committee.

The EU should listen to what the new member states have to say about Russia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Last year the French Foreign Ministry announced a hastily convened 'summit' hosted by Jacques Chirac with Vladimir Putin, Gerhard Schr�der and Jos�uis Zapatero, where the Big Four would discuss important issues, inter alia 'Poland and the Baltic States'. Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania read the press statement and waited, quite rationally, for a briefing about what their EU colleagues would discuss with their large neighbour.

No briefing came before the meeting. None came after.

This single, not very consequential event is more of a symptom than a problem: it's not that the EU needs to change its policy toward Russia, it needs to have one. Not necessarily one that appeals to everyone, but one that everyone agrees on. The problem with EU foreign policy is that it is common only when it deals with far away places about which we care little. As soon as national - or in some unsavoury cases, as with a certain former chancellor, personal - interest comes into play, EU policy flies out the window. Witness Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's statement when his country held the presidency of the EU, offering to be Vladimir Putin's advocate on human rights violations in Chechnya, when for once the EU even had an agreed position critical of human rights in Russia.

Secondly, Europe needs to get its head out of the sand and develop a policy based on reality, not wishful thinking and ignorance. A recent debate in the European Parliament on the Ukrainian gas crisis was typical. Speaker after speaker spoke of the cutting-off of Ukrainian gas as a "wake-up call" to Europe. Hello? Russia has repeatedly used energy shut-offs to its neighbours as a tool of foreign policy from 1990 onwards, beginning with Lithuania's peaceful independence drive. When Russia's neighbours make the wrong moves - become independent, privatise their infrastructure to the wrong (ie Western) companies or elect the wrong president - Moscow punishes them with hikes in the price of gas and oil or with interrupting supply. Compliant, totalitarian states such as Belarus still pay the cheapest, Soviet-era rates.

The problem is not a lack of knowledge on such matters, it is an unwillingness to accept reality. EU institutions simply ignore the knowledge and insights of the new member states, which after all know the language, both literal and figurative, that Russia uses. Instead of listening to what Poles, Latvians and Czechs have to say about Russia, Europe persists in its myth that knowing nothing is objective, smugly and patronisingly insisting that the experience of the new member states makes them "biased". When a problem is so glaring it cannot be ignored, the response is a meaningless: "But we mustn't isolate Russia." As if that were the sole alternative to saying nothing.

Russia borders five EU member states. In addition, the EU is now, or soon will be, bordered by Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, with the Caucasus a stone's throw away - all countries where Russia has consistently supported anti-democratic forces, refused to remove its unwanted troops and/or used energy blackmail to achieve political ends. Freedom of expression and freedom of association in Russia are in free-fall. The electronic media is under government control. The energy giant Gazprom, which controls who gets what gas, is headed by the deputy prime-minister. Might this situation perhaps make some people consider a review of how the Union approaches Russia? Might it be time to realise that EU policies of the past five years have had no effect on Russia's behaviour?

I wouldn't dare suggest the EU needs a radical change in its Russia policy, but I would recommend we reconsider the utility of what we have been doing and not doing. The first step is to admit that we have been irrelevant. But as long as EU member states try to outdo one another in appealing to Russia at the expense of other member states, as long as we ignore what is happening to civil liberties inside Russia and its ham-fisted policies toward EU neighbours and as long as the EU persists in repeating clich�such as "we mustn't isolate Russia" any time that anyone raises bad Russian behaviour, then an EU Russia policy will remain a fiction.

• Estonian Socialist MEP Toomas Hendrik Ilves is a vice-president of the European Parliament's committee on foreign affairs and a former minister of foreign affairs.

Two MEPs discuss the EU's relations with its large Eastern neighbour.
Article is part of a European Voice Special Report, 'EU-Russia'.

• Primary Source

European Commission: DG External Relations: Countries: Russia http://www.eeas.europa.eu/russia/index_en.htm

---