MEPs won’t let EU bypass human rights for energy

Members of the European Parliament have warned that EU plans to boost ties with central Asia will fail if the Union sees the region only as a source of energy and neglects human rights and governance.

UK centre-right MEP Martin Callanan said EU energy needs could not be met, in the long term, by ignoring human rights.

"The best way to get secure energy supplies is to form stable, democratic countries," he said. "We talk about these things in the abstract but these regimes have some of the worst human rights records in the world. In Uzbekistan they have thrown people in boiling water. Are people saying we should forget about this?"

His comments came after EU diplomats on Friday (2 February) held a first round of discussions on proposals dramatically to revise the EU’s approach to the region.

Under proposals prepared by the European Commission and the EU’s special envoy to central Asia, Pierre Morel, the EU should engage with authoritarian regimes to regain influence lost to China, Russia and the US.

The proposals said the EU’s policies of making engagement conditional on human rights standards "have not had the desired impact".

Dutch centre-right MEP Albert Jan Maat, a vice-chair of the delegation to central Asia, welcomed the push for better relations with central Asia, but said that the EU would achieve nothing if it did not help the countries of the region to develop.

"If Europe is only after oil and gas what is the difference between the EU and Russia and China? If we help them develop you will see we will have very good relations," he said.

Plans to improve co-operation with central Asian countries have been broadly welcomed by EU member states, although diplomats say there are still differing views on how to improve human rights in the region.

According to one diplomat present at Friday’s meeting "there is growing sense that we [the EU] need to engage more in the region, to make them listen to us".

"Everyone is concerned for the human rights issue, the question is how to move forward," he added.

Lithuanian Liberal MEP Ona Jukneviciene, head of the Parliament’s delegation to central Asia, said the region was showing signs of change that the EU could capitalise on.

"There is room for change in the EU’s policy, to become more practical," she said, citing Kazakhstan’s desire to chair the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe as one example of EU leverage in the region.

And there are indications, she said, that the government of Uzbekistan would like to work with the EU on improving governance, a hitherto taboo subject.

"If the Uzbeks are ready to open up to the EU that is a substantial change," she added.

But Jukneviciene, who worked for three years as a World Bank expert in Uzbekistan, said that the EU would have to improve the way it supports development in the region.

"The projects are designed in Brussels, they do not reflect what is needed," she said, adding that current EU funding is largely wasted.

Other MEPs have warned that central Asia’s potential as an energy supply should not be overstated.

Valdis Dombrovskis, a centre-right Latvian MEP, said that better relations with central Asia would solve only one part of the EU’s energy security problems, as the region’s two largest producers, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, currently have no way to bring large quantities of gas to Europe without using Russian pipelines.

"The problem is that there are limited alternative routes to Russia’s Gazprom infrastructure," Dombrovskis said.

He warned that efforts to create a trans-Caspian pipeline, to bypass Russia, will prove difficult. "Russia is blocking this because of environmental and territorial concerns," he said.

Members of the European Parliament have warned that EU plans to boost ties with central Asia will fail if the Union sees the region only as a source of energy and neglects human rights and governance.