EU prepares to sweet talk Duma’s new members

Date: 11/01/1996

By Elizabeth Wise

EU officials are preparing for a charm offensive to convince Russia's new Duma of the value of maintaining ties with the EU.

But they do so knowing that they must not adopt too aggressive an approach to avoid scaring off the very politicians they want to court. European Commission officials say that without changing theme or ideology, the vocabulary used by the EU must change.

Russia's partnership and cooperation accord with the Union is in mid-air, having been approved by Russia's government but not yet ratified by its legislature. The government must now persuade the new wave of Communists and nationalists elected to the Duma in parliamentary elections last month to do so.

But it could face an uphill struggle. When the lower house of the Russian parliament convenes next week (16 January), the combined forces of the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party will control up to 190 of the Duma's 450 seats.

Both parties stand for principles opposed to those governing EU policy towards Russia and enshrined in the bilateral cooperation accord, which encourages economic reform and opening all levels of government to political dialogue with the west. The accord foresees freer trade with the EU, something likely to scare nationalist politicians.

Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said after the 17 December elections that his party's victory amounted to the defeat of the government's economic programme. Communist calls to end privatisation of enterprises will also strike a sour note with EU staff working for the Tacis programme, whose priorities include easing Russia's transition to a market economy and encouraging the restructuring and privatisation of state-run industries.

Tacis officials are now calculating a New Year's budget for Russia and are wondering how visible they should be. “It's more a question of modulating rather than increasing or decreasing” the spending plans, said one.

One Tacis programme that will certainly be maintained is the funding of a form of 'training course' for Duma members, with seminars for young parliamentarians on subjects such as federalism and regional policy.

While Duma candidates did not reveal their stand on the EU in their campaign speeches, Union officials say there is a “general sense that they will be looking more to Russian solutions rather than naïvely accepting European ones”.

“We will have to pay more attention to our image,” one commented, adding that the EU should be careful not to push Western ideas too obviously. The message must be one of partnership rather than patronage, particularly with respect to the economy. Discontent with President Boris Yeltsin's economic reforms, which brought a traumatic slide in living conditions, is considered to have prompted the rise in Communist support.

As a result, the Tacis economic policy advice programme, a team of Russian and EU economists who advise Moscow on budget or labour policy questions, export policies or exchange rates, “will have to be more discreet,” said the official. “We'll have to sit back a bit and wait for (Moscow's) requests for advice rather than pushing it.”

For his part, Yeltsin must convince new Duma members that the EU partnership agreement serves Russian interests. This is a task with which Union officials and members of the European Parliament's delegation for relations with Russia want to help.

Yeltsin's government planned to present the accord to the legislature after the European Parliament and a sufficient number of EU member states had ratified it. Now that Parliament and four states have done so, EU officials say that time has come.

At the Commission, officials say they are not worried the new Duma might derail the accord, but they are prepared for a longer wait than they might have envisaged with the former assembly.

“Obviously there's going to be a different attitude, but nothing that worries us too much,” said one. “Time is on our side.”

But he did admit: “We have to find new people in the Duma to talk to. Part of the strategy is to find a broader range of people and make more contacts than we did with the old Duma. We have to get the message across that this is important.”

Eleven more EU states must also ratify the accord and that is expected to take most of this year. In the meantime, although the Duma has limited power, its members could cause both Yeltsin and EU officials a very uneasy six months in the run-up to Russia's presidential elections in June.

Responding to Communist success and keen for votes himself - on the assumption now widely being made that he will run again despite his health problems - Yeltsin has appeared to make concessions to the anti-reform movement.

Recent changes in government, including the resignations of several known reformers and the replacement of Foreign Minisiter Andrei Kozyrev with Yevgeni Primakov, a former KGB chief known for his nationalist, anti-NATO stance, do not strike fear in the hearts of EU officials still marvelling at how democratically last month's elections were conducted. But they are wary and may be waiting a long time before their partnership accord becomes more than just a plan.