EU-Russia relations on ice

Officials from Russia and the EU are trying to keep expectations low ahead of their summit in Mafra, Portugal, on Friday (26 October). Both sides seem to agree that little of substance is to be expected before Russians go to the polls to elect a new president next March.

The EU will be represented by José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who will be accompanied by Peter Mandelson and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the trade and external relations commissioners, together with José Socrates, the Portuguese prime minister, and Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief. On the Russian side, President Vladimir Putin will lead a delegation that also includes Foreign Minister Sergej Lavrov and the ministers for trade and energy.

For a decade, the EU has been holding regular summits with Russia under a partnership and co-operation agreement. The agreement, concluded for an initial ten-year period in December 1997, is now coming to an end, though it will automatically renew every year until a successor document has been signed. That, however, still appears to be months off - in the best case: Poland has vetoed talks on a new agreement because of a Russian embargo against meat imports from Poland and little progress is expected even after the current Polish government was voted out of power on Sunday (21 October). Poland now wants Russia to make a better offer to resolve the conflict.

"We do not want this new treaty more than you want it," Russia’s EU ambassador, Vladimir Chizhov, said in an interview ahead of the summit. "We can wait until the EU is ready," he added.

The support Poland gets from its EU partners is in itself significant as it is evidence of a more assertive European stance vis-à-vis Russia. Observers and diplomats see the last EU-Russia summit, held in the Russian city of Samara in May, as a turning point in the bilateral relationship, with the EU increasingly speaking with one voice.

The German government in particular has visibly cooled towards its erstwhile ally in Moscow. The previous chancellor, Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder, enjoyed cordial relations with Putin and entered the employ of Russia’s energy giant Gazprom immediately after leaving office.

EU-Russia relations have deteriorated over the fatal poisoning in London last November of Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of the Kremlin, mob violence against the Estonian embassy in Moscow and cyber-attacks that shut down the country’s electronic infrastructure for several days last May and Russia’s increasingly evident determination to use its energy exports as a political lever in its relations with Europe. Russia currently provides some 25% of the EU’s oil and gas consumption.

Overall, however, economic relations are lopsided. While Russia is only the EU’s third-largest import partner, after China and the United States, the EU is by far the largest export market for Russian goods. Russia has ambitions to enter the World Trade Organization but will not be able to do so while it maintains the import ban on Polish meat.

Neither side expects much movement on any of these fronts before Russia’s presidential election next March. The Russian constitution prevents Putin from standing for a third consecutive term in office, but as leader of Russia’s largest party he might well be appointed prime minister after stepping down as president. Few doubt that Putin’s party will remain on top in a parliamentary election on 2 December.

But events could put further strain on EU-Russia relations before they have a chance to recover. The problem of Kosovo’s final status - Russia opposes the province’s independence from Serbia - and of Iran’s uranium-enrichment programme, which Russia does not see in the same light as the US and its European allies, will both require some sort of response in the coming months. On Kosovo, there is a 10 December deadline for Russian, American and European mediators to report back to the United Nations, with a general understanding that the chances of an agreed settlement are slim and that Kosovo’s government will declare independence soon after the deadline. On Iran, the US and some EU members, notably France, are pressing for tougher sanctions and are likely to step up their attempts to convince the EU to swing behind their proposals. Both these issues have great potential to upset EU-Russian relations.

Officials from Russia and the EU are trying to keep expectations low ahead of their summit in Mafra, Portugal, on Friday (26 October). Both sides seem to agree that little of substance is to be expected before Russians go to the polls to elect a new president next March.