Russia and the European Union. Dark skies to the east

Date: 21/02/04

Strategists in Brussels no longer talk sweetly of encircling the enlarged European Union with a “ring of friends”

NOW that the German Question has been solved, the Russian Question beckons. Can Russia, after centuries of autocracy and imperialism, be turned into the sort of nice democratic country that gets along easily with its European neighbours? The answer seems to be: not for a while yet, to judge from a policy paper released last week by the European Commission, the European Union's executive body, which suggests that relations between the Union and Russia are close to a post-Soviet low.

The Commission calls for “discussing frankly Russian practices that run counter to universal and European values”. It says Russia has problems with democracy, human rights and press freedom. It points to rows over the environment, trade, border regimes and technical co-operation. It says aid to Russia has had “at best mixed” results; and it chides Russia for “assertive” behaviour towards neighbours.

Some of these arguments go back years. But they are getting more heated with the approach of the EU's eastward enlargement in May. The EU will embrace ten countries in all, seven of which were subjects or satellites of the Soviet Union. As these countries impose tight EU visa rules, and close their markets to Russian goods, such as noisy aircraft which fail to meet EU standards, Russia has been jolted into realising that EU enlargement will affect it much more in practical terms than the eastward advance by NATO, which used to monopolise its attention.

So Russia has redirected its diplomatic firepower. It wants to renegotiate its “partnership and co-operation agreement” with the EU, Which is supposed to govern all aspects of the relationship. It has also put forward a list of 14 big items, from trade concessions to visa-free travel, that it wants brought into the negotiations. It has threatened to let the treaty lapse - though EU officials claim that Russia itself would lose more from that course, by risking trade privileges with the EU.

The EU also says that Russia, for all its demands, has shown little recent enthusiasm for detailed talks. The distractions of Russia's parliamentary election in December and an approaching presidential one in March may be partly to blame. But there is more to it than that. Russia resents being informed - as happens now - of EU positions which have already been agreed among governments and so are scarcely changeable. It wants new joint bodies which will give it a seat at the table when EU governments are debating decisions that may affect its interests. It wants something more like the arrangement it has with NATO, where its representatives sit alongside those of NATO governments in a ministerial council and a cascade of lesser panels, enjoying “a voice but not a veto” in alliance deliberations.

The European Commission hates that idea, fearing that Russia-EU relations would then become hostage to bilateral ties between national governments and Russia, in which the latter could dominate more easily. Memories are fresh of the EU-Russia summit in November when Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, supposedly representing EU governments, disowned EU positions: he sympathised with Russia's war in Chechnya and its harassment of the Yukos oil company.

The Commission's latest analysis of Russia marks a sharp change from its starry-eyed optimism of a year ago, when it published a document called “Wider Europe” saying that Russia, and other countries of eastern Europe and the southern Mediterranean, could be turned into a “ring of friends” around the enlarged Union, absorbing the Union's political and economic values and being rewarded with aid and improved market access.

The EU failed to see that Russia is once again driving hard bargains in the world; it is less interested in friendship than it is in commercial and diplomatic gains. The EU forgot that Russia is fed up with foreign-dictated reforms, having had its fill of them in the 1990s. Nor does Russia have all that much to gain from wider access to EU markets for most goods and services. Its biggest exports are oil and gas, limited only by the EU's fear of over-dependence.

Wherever the Russian Question now leads, the question of eastern Europe will follow. The EU's “Wider Europe” strategy also calls for closer ties to Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, new neighbours of the enlarged Union. Poland talks of offering them full membership some day. But Russia sees them as its own close strategic allies, as its natural business partners, and as members of an enlarging Russian-led free-trade area. It will hardly look on sweetly if the EU tries to lure away its key allies.

All this means that EU governments face big decisions in the coming months. One is whether to stand firm in the current sparring with Russia. That could mean letting the “partnership and co-operation” accord collapse. The consequences could be offset by temporary arrangements, but the symbolic damage would be far-reaching.

Another is how to respond if Ukraine's presidential election and Belarus's parliamentary election, both due in October, are too blatantly rigged. November's peaceful revolution in Georgia, another ex-Soviet republic, has provided a tempting precedent. There, encouraged by America, opposition forces profited from public anger at a gerrymandered election to overthrow an incompetent (though pro-American) president, Edward Shevardnadze, and to vote in a younger and probably more effective pro-American leader, Mikhail Saakashvili. Russia will be on guard now against any similar foreign-led move in Ukraine or Belarus.

It has reason to worry. Some Americans scarcely conceal their hope for a revolution against Belarus's wild-eyed and dictatorial leader, Alexander Lukashenka, or against Ukraine's entrenched and corrupt nomenklatura. Central Europeans will tend to agree unreservedly. They want to see Russia challenged and contained. The EU's older members will tend to be much less gung-ho. They are impatient already with the political and economic demands of the current enlargement, and have little wish to get drawn deeper into eastern Europe, nor to argue with Russia any more than necessary. Finding a common policy towards eastern Europe that satisfies old and new EU members will be a big challenge for the enlarged Union. Finding one acceptable to Russia too, if that is a criterion, will be harder still.

http://www.eeas.europa.eu/russia/index_en.htm http://www.eeas.europa.eu/russia/index_en.htm

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