Mongolia’s Quest for Third Neighbours: Why the European Union?

Mongolia is beginning to attract more interest from European organisations and institutions. A Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between Mongolia and the European Union is expected to be concluded soon, and in March 2012, NATO agreed an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program (IPCP) with Mongolia. In October 2011, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel took time out from dealing with the financial crisis to visit the country, and the OSCE Secretary General visited in June 2012 to discuss Mongolia’s request to become a fully participating member of the organisation.

Over the past two decades, European countries and institutions have had limited interest in responding to Ulaanbaatar’s calls for cooperation and partnership because of Mongolia’s remoteness and geostrategic insignificance. But European attitudes are changing, because Mongolia’s sustained commitment to democracy and to creating economic opportunities is aligned with European global objectives, and particularly the EU’s goals in Central Asia. When the EU left Mongolia out of its Strategy for Central Asia in 2007, the European Parliament urged the Council and Commission to reconsider in view of Mongolia’s substantial progress ‘in establishing a state based on democracy, human rights and the rule of law in the Mongolia’s Quest for Third Neighbours: Why the European Union?

Jargalsaikhan Mendee
Jargalsaikhan Mendee is a graduate student at the Political Science Department of the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School and the Institute of Asian Research at UBC. He has served as Mongolia’s Defence Attaché to the United States, Chief of the Foreign Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Defence of Mongolia, Senior National Representative at the US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, and Research Fellow at the Mongolian Institute for Strategic Studies.

1 Embassy of Mongolia in Austria, ‘OSCE studies Mongolia’s bid to become a member state’, interview with the OSCE Secretary-General, 23 June 2012, {http://www.embassymon.at/news/news_473.html}, accessed 3 July 2012.

2 European Parliament resolution of 20 February 2008 on an EU Strategy for Central Asia (2007/2102(INI)). region’. The Council and the Commission define Central Asia as the five post-Soviet ‘-stans’, but the European Parliament includes Mongolia as part of the Central Asian region.

Mongolia’s inclusion in the EU’s Central Asia Strategy could help the EU in its work of promoting democracy. Mongolia would value the opportunity to develop closer ties with the EU in order to balance the influence of China and Russia and advance its ‘third neighbour’ strategy. This strategy is common to most smaller states in Eurasia that have suffered as a result of the geopolitical interests of their neighbours.

This policy brief explores the reasons for Mongolia’s sustained commitment to European institutions, and especially to the EU.