The FINANCIAL — As the world has watched tragic events in Ukraine unfold since late 2013, the future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) policy has gone from being a niche topic to the centre of one of the biggest geopolitical crises the EU has faced since the Cold War. With eyes focused on Kiev, Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk the future of EU ties to the South Caucasus has somewhat slipped below the radar of most Western policymakers, with the three Eastern Partners all moving in different directions.
The challenges they face are addressed in the Foreign Policy Centre’s new Trouble in the Neighbourhood? The future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership publication.
That Georgia pushed ahead with its Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area deal came as little surprise to European Union observers. However the EU faces a number of challenges in relation to Georgia, firstly navigating the more fragmented political environment over recent years to ensure that the reform agenda at the heart of the agreements stays on track. This will involve working with the different forces inside the government and in relation to how it deals with the issues around the previous UNM government ensuring the right balance is struck between prosecuting those responsible for past wrongdoing and ensuring the process is not being abused to use the courts to neuter the opposition. Clearly also, as Ana Dvali and Giorgi Kanashvili set out, the EU needs to intensify its efforts to support Georgian firms in taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the DCFTA if it is to deliver on public expectations for economic growth. They also highlight some of the gaps between public aspirations and reality over the EU’s role in conflict resolution, arguing that greater focus will be needed to make progress in the longer term once focus returns from Ukraine.
In hindsight, when President Sargsyan was summoned to Moscow in September 2013 and suddenly reversed political course away from signing an EU Association agreement and DCFTA to instead join the Customs Union, this perhaps marked the start of the current geopolitical crisis. Armenia never had the intention of totally removing itself from the Russian orbit, with CSTO membership vital to its security and Russian ownership of many of its major firms, but losing the EU dimension has greatly reduced Yerevan’s independent room for manoeuvre on the world stage. The EU’s approach needs to respect Armenia’s decision, but also to continue and expand its support for independent civil society across a range of different fields, potentially switching over funds previously allocated to support government budgets.
Some analysts have noted the gradually warming ties between Baku and Moscow. While to some extent true, perhaps more noticeable is the extent to which Azerbaijan is aggressively pushing away from ‘the West’ politically. While at the moment the United States is taking the bulk of the fire from the Azerbaijani leadership it is trying to put out a warning to the EU not to challenge the deteriorating human rights situation in Azerbaijan. The increasing crackdowns on independent NGOs, activists and journalists places the EU in a tactical conundrum about whether non-critical engagement or political pressure is the best route to improve the situation and poses a challenge between respect for its values and its interests in Azerbaijan’s commercial and energy opportunities. In this authors view, if the EU was to push ahead at this time with its proposed ‘Strategic Modernisation Partnership’ with Azerbaijan, a light-on-content format not offered to the other Eastern partners, it would significantly undermine the EU’s commitments to supporting its values of human rights and democracy in the wider region, and therefore the deal should be put on hold.
Trouble in the Neighbourhood sets out the challenges the region faces and gives some ideas on how to reform the Eastern Partnership to fit changing circumstances as the EU reviews its approach ahead of the May 2015 Eastern Partnership Summit in Riga. With different partners moving in different directions (Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova moving towards the EU, Azerbaijan moving somewhat away and Armenia and Belarus moving towards Russia), the time has come for a more heavily differentiated ‘3-1-2’ approach to Eastern Partnership that recognises more explicitly that the countries have different aspirations on what they want out of their relationship with the EU. In all Eastern Partners there is a call for the EU to improve its communication with the public about its activities and goals.
Eastern Partnership had been described as ‘enlargement-lite’, trying to achieve similar goals of economic development, improved governance and (in theory) stability but without the same political and financial commitment from the EU. It aimed to avoid difficult decisions about future EU membership for these countries, but recent events have seen Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia (still managing the aftermath of 2008) paying greater costs for ‘choosing Europe’ than Brussels policymakers prepared for, and understandably these countries now are pushing harder for a pathway to eventual accession.
The EU’s internal and external political environment makes it an awful time to start the membership debate. With internal problems from the Greek economy to the UK potentially leaving the EU, rising concerns around immigration and the continuing impact of austerity have limited the amount of capital, both political and economic, that the EU has been able to spend in response to the challenges the Eastern Partnership is now facing. While the EU will hope to stall such pressures in Riga, it will struggle postpone it for too much longer. The EU needs to begin a difficult internal conversation about offering Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova ‘possible candidate’ status. It would need to be clear to both domestic and Eastern Partner audiences that any process would offer the opportunity for eventual EU membership only in the far future if tough criteria are met and with long transitional controls on labour migration subsequently applied. This may sound a weak offer to pro-Europeans in the Eastern Partners but even agreeing this now would have the potential to create a major political backlash within the EU. So membership is the last thing European policymakers will want to think about right now, but it is vital for the future of the Eastern Neighbourhood that they begin to do so.
Adam Hug is Policy Director at the Foreign Policy Centre. He is the editor of a new publication Trouble in the Neighbourhood? The future of the EU’s Eastern Partnership.
