Eastern Partnership Programme: special status for Belarus

On 26 August 2008 Poland and Sweden put forward an initiative to establish special relations with six countries of the Eastern Europe: ex-Soviet republics Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus. They proposed the following formula for the Eastern Partnership Programme: 27+5 (6). Belarus was so to say in the brackets or under consideration under the condition of the democratization of the country.

Russia will be invited in order to discuss several local initiatives (for instance, those that relate to Kaliningrad oblast).

The idea to create the Eastern Partnership Programme came as a reaction to the Mediterranean Partnership Programme, which was lobbied by the countries interested in cooperation with the North Africa region. European officials are not hiding the fact that the initiative related to the Eastern Partnership was brought up specifically following the conflict between Russia and Georgia.

Since the Eastern Partnership Programme yet has no its own Secretariat, it will be managed directly by the European Commission.

The European Union is planning to create a belt of good neighbourhood and stability

The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, said that the European Neighbourhood Policy, which is not outlining the perspective for partnership in the European Union, was aiming for “significant improvement of the level of political inter-relations, a wide integration into the EU economy, the enforcement of the energy security and increase of the financial assistance”.

The initiative envisages a number of areas for cooperation: adoption of agreement on free trade; complex programmes of financial support; step-by-step integration into the European Union economy; cooperation in the area of energy security, increasing opportunities for labour migration. A draft communiqué contains a proposal related to opening of special visa centres in order to speed up the process of Schengen visa issuance. The European Commission is planning to reduce gradually the visa cost and to simplify the visa procedures and, in the long term perspective, to introduce the visa-free regime for the partner countries. The Eastern Partnership project also envisages the gradual increase in financial assistance in the region: from today’s 6 Euro per person to 12 Euro per person in 2013 and to 20 Euro in 2020.

The European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, said that it was planned to allocate 600 million Euro for the implementation of the Eastern Partnership Programme. It is also planned that programmes of integration into the economic space of Europe will be elaborated for each country.

What Europe expects in return

While offering these benefits to the neighbouring countries, the European Union is expecting certain moves forward in return: the Eastern European countries need to adopt full Acquis communautaire (entire complex of the legislation of the European Union which is presented on 100,000 pages today) and to recognize the decisions of the European Court as obligatory. Moreover, the Eastern Partnership envisages signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in the area of energy security, which would lead in the future to “the joint management and even ownership of pipelines”. This way the European Union is planning to implement one of the tasks of the European Security Strategy, to create a belt of good neighbourhood and stability around itself, a particular sanitary border around its territory.

The initiative is under discussion, elaboration, perfection

The first discussion on the Eastern Partnership took place last year on 19-20 June in the course of the meeting of the European Union. The initiative was approved on principle and sent for further elaboration to the European Commission.

On 3 December 2008 the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso and the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner introduced the Eastern Partnership initiative officially.

Mr. Ferrero-Waldner says that the goal of the project “is re-rapprochement, rather than integration: it was elaborated in order to assist every country-partner to become closer to the European Union. Mr. Barroso said that “regardless of the fact that all the mentioned above countries significantly differ from one another, they are united in their attitude towards the European Union, they all link the European Union with the stability, reliable leadership and prosperity”.

On 12 December 2008, in Brussels, in the course of the Summit of the Heads of the Member States and the Heads of the governments of the EU the Eastern Partnership initiative as approved by the 27 Member States of the European Union.

It is expected that on 19-20 March 2009 the leaders of the European Union will adopt the final version of the Eastern Partnership Programme and will make a formal decision regarding the invitation to the six post-Soviet countries to take part in it.

In May in Prague, in the capital of Czech Republic, the presiding country of the European Union, an inauguration Summit of the participants of the Eastern Partnership initiative will take place.

Whether Belarus will be invited into Europe

Will it become possible for Belarus to come out of the brackets and become a fully pledged six partner of the Eastern Partnership Programme? It first has to become the fully pledged participant of the European Neighbourhood Policy. In its turn, in order to do so, Belarus has to fulfill a number of requirements put forward by the EU. It is known, that the list of 12 requirements of the European Union with regard to Belarus was shortened to 5. It concerns political prisoners, improvement of the situation with the Media, reform of the election legislation, improvement of the conditions for activities of non-governmental organizations, the so-called third sector, also the freedom of assembly and expression.

February and March were busy with EU officials visiting Minsk. On 18 February a Delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe visited Belarus. On 20 February representatives of the European Parliament came to Belarus.

On 19 February the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Secretary-General of the Council of the European Union, Javier Solana, paid an official visit to Belarus, in the course of which he met with the representatives of the opposition, the third sector and the President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko. It was the first visit of a high-level official of the European Union to Belarus. The main subject of discussions was the participation of Belarus in the Eastern Partnership Programme. Mr. Lukashenko said in the course of the meeting with Mr. Solana, “I would like to ask you to try to exclude all mediators from the relations between Belarus and Europe, in particular, those who act from not a positive position with regard to our country… The European Union understands very well what contemporary Belarus means for Europe”. He also pointed out that “we also realize the value of the European Union for us both from the political point of view and from the economic point of view, mostly from the economic point of view”.

At the final press conference Mr. Solana announced that “there is a special place for Belarus in the structure of this Partnership”

It was planned that on 12 March the European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner would pay a visit to Belarus, however the visit was postponed until April. Mrs. Ferrero-Waldner said that “there was a need for additional elaboration of the Belarusian issue”

The issue of invitation of the President Aleksandr Lukashenko to the inauguration Summit in Prague is still open and the outcome will depend on “the behaviour of the Belarusian leader” and on “further development of the situation in Belarus”, said the Head of the Czech Foreign Ministry Karel Schwarzenberg.

Ludmila Korsak