Neighbourhood policy is a fundamental question concerning the security of all European countries

Interview with: Paweł Kowal

Pawel Kowal is the chair of the European Parliament’s delegation to the EU-Ukraine Parliamentary Cooperation Committee.

3 May saw the first meeting of Euronest, the joint parliamentary assembly of MEPs and parliamentarians from the countries of the Eastern Partnership. How do you evaluate it from the perspective of a participant?

There was a certain feeling that something was missing. That was firstly because this project – although fortunately it finally came about thanks to Jacek Saryusz-Wolski's initiative – preparing it took a very long time. Work on Euronest should have started two years ago, at the beginning of the European Parliament’s current term. The political context would have been much more favourable for Euronest then, as that was a time when some observers had great expectations of the Eastern Partnership. But today the Partnership is undergoing a crisis. During the negotiations to prepare for the session of the Eastern Partnership countries’ Parliamentary Assembly, you could hear murmurs in the corridors of the partner countries that the proposal was not particularly attractive. Ukraine  should be counting on this offer being not only accepted but also extended, but instead it dragged out its negotiations under the pretext that it wanted to Belarus to join Euronest, irrespective of the internal situation in that country. In the end, no representatives from the Belarusian parliament came, and none of the suggestions made by certain negotiators to invite representatives of the Belarusian opposition as observers were taken up. A few symbolically empty chairs for Belarus were set out. The Eastern partners did not give this event on 3 May any special priority. The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament did not attend, and the other countries just sent their deputy speakers. You can see that this is a good, reasonable project, but it was two years late.

So, it’s a symbolic project?

... Pretty much symbolic, and not contributing very much today. As for Ukraine, the Ukrainians are saying openly that this is a project for Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and not for them.

What stage are the negotiations between the European Union and Ukraine on the Association Agreement (AA) and the Deep & Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) at now? Can they be closed by the end of 2011?

Phillippe Cuisson and his negotiating team, who are responsible for this, have said that it is possible, and that Poland expects the same. Poland will have the rotating presidency at that time, so I think our diplomats are closely following the progress of the talks between Brussels and Kiev. The declarations coming from the people responsible for the talks and the Polish and Ukrainian diplomats are optimistic that the negotiations are heading for an imminent conclusion. However, we know that the agreement will not be signed before the end of this year, because it is impossible to translate the entire document into all the official languages of the Union any more quickly.
I know that the Ukrainians are still preparing some negotiating proposals which would facilitate a consensus on the most difficult details, such as quotas on agricultural products and special brand-name goods like champagne and cognac.

What will happen if the Association Agreement with Ukraine is signed, but then Viktor Yanukovych, whom the West has supported so far, ends up stretching democratic standards and even violating them? How should the Union respond if Ukraine falls under a harsher kind of government?

If the treaty’s real ties between Ukraine and the EU are strengthened, then it’s less likely that authoritarian methods of governance will be implemented in that country. There is a certain relationship – sometimes formal, sometimes informal – which creates a political atmosphere which does not allow certain standards to be violated. Responses to problems concerning the freedom of the media should be appropriate, and unavoidable for the government in Ukraine. I repeat to Ukrainian politicians that this is a problem, and one which also concerns the opposition. The important thing is not to use these arguments against the process of Ukraine’s integration, because it is in Poland’s and Europe’s interest for this process to proceed without any problems. So we have to influence the government in Kiev within the context of the negotiations as they come to a close. There are several large European countries whose politicians will use the incidents in Ukraine to block the negotiating process. However, it is difficult to reconcile this approach with a truly pro-European attitude. A crisis of confidence in the EU in the East is bound to intensify undemocratic trends there.

The European Union took a hard line against Belarus due to violations of democratic principles during the last presidential elections and repression against the opposition there. The European Parliament’s latest resolution on the future report on the European Neighbourhood Policy clearly calls for increased cooperation with representatives of civil society in the partner countries, and for respect for human rights. Isn’t the EU being hypocritical in not displaying the same kind of sensitivity to Azerbaijan as it does to Belarus?

Regarding Azerbaijan, whose leaders don’t see it as a future member of the EU, the policy is to act to maintain stability. The EU’s policy towards Azerbaijan concerns the security of the local energy deposits, and to some degree European energy security and peace, maintaining the status quo in the South Caucasus, including in the context of Russian politics. This is the European Union’s kind of realistic approach. It’s a good thing that in addition to this, support will be given to civil society, although this is not the main line of the European policy towards Azerbaijan.

As for Belarus, the case is more complicated. Belarus’s location means it must be treated as a country which could be willing to take a very pro-European course, after Lukashenko leaves office. I’m sceptical that the European Union has really changed course markedly again; this means it has a relatively poor reputation, not only in Minsk, but in the other partner countries’ capitals. It is clear that its policy is childish, irritable, lacking any long-term considerations, and so such an impression is bound to arise. The policy towards Belarus was thawed without any serious basis for doing so, and later, after the demonstrations, it was toughened up again – but sufficient agreement to do this wasn’t obtained in the Council, and eventually it ended up in just a slight extension of the list of Belarusian personae non grata in the European Union. On the other hand, some very harsh statements were made, which might have given the impression to third parties that Lukashenko’s regime would be subjected to very severe sanctions. In my opinion, the sanctions should be somewhat stricter, but the rhetoric a little less so. However, the actual punishments have turned out not to be that severe, whereas the rhetoric, on the contrary, is becoming even more so. This means Lukashenko can exploit the EU’s policy in his country’s internal dealings, by showing that Belarus is under attack, and so on.

Belarus and Azerbaijan generally need different criteria applied to them. Belarus is a potential candidate country, and this has not changed. It is difficult to imagine that today, but Belarus’s geographical position means that (if it can avoid permanently falling into Russia’s hands) it is a potential future member of the EU. In this regard, Azerbaijan is in a different situation.

Currently tension is rising around the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It hasn’t been so long since the EU sent a special observer there. Does Brussels have no opportunity to play a more important role in this situation? How should the EU act in the event of war breaking out between two countries belonging to the Eastern Partnership?

It’s true that there is a small arms race going on in both countries, assisted by Russia. In the case of Armenia, this assistance takes the form of subsidies; and in the case of Azerbaijan it’s a matter of realising the interests of the Russian arms industry. I'm sceptical about the EU’s reactions. Practice shows that its diplomacy never precedes events, even as dramatic as those in North Africa. The EU will only take effective action when (heaven forbid) something actually happens there. Both countries have aspirations to cooperate closely with the EU, but neither is prepared to do so. Armenia sees ties with the EU as the solution to all its problems, both with Russia and Azerbaijan. I don't have any good ideas from the EU today. The Eastern Partnership is too weak a medicine to cure such  complicated problems. We’ll see how discreetly the Union behaves, how ready Lady Ashton will be to respond, if something happens. Finally, there is also the question of whether anything will happen at all, because it may be possible to halt these activities.

After the recent events in North Africa, the EU’s Mediterranean countries began lobbying for the EU to assign more financial support for the southern partners, by transferring some of the EU’s funds destined for the Eastern partners. These countries are led by France and Italy. Is this proposal likely to be implemented?

As far as the events in the southern Mediterranean countries are concerned, France and Italy have been very unhelpful both to Europe as a whole and the EU in their reactions. This also concerns the neighbourhood policy; instead of agreeing that it must be rethought from scratch, and specifying its objectives differently in relation to the geographical context, they simply suggested moving what was anyway a pretty small sum away from the funds for cooperating with the Eastern partners. Instead of thinking about how to support the young people in Tunisia or Egypt, for example, they have focused exclusively on immigration policy, which in fact has been restricted to the symbolic closure of Lampedusa, and so cutting off desperate people from the route to the European Union. In both cases, the response was not appropriate to the EU; and as far as the proposal to reintroduce border control on intra-EU borders, that was incompatible with the treaties. The Mediterranean countries’ response has been disappointing from beginning to end – starting from the moment when the events began in the countries of North Africa (when for the first few weeks, the experts in that region could not even clarify the substance of what was happening), up to their subsequent reactions, which are not political or strategic, but just defensive, in the light of their internal electoral situations, especially in France. We should have expected a strengthening of the neighbourhood policy in general; here France and Italy should have been supported, if they had proposed such a project; as well as the recognition that this is one of the central political issues in the European Union. We should not reduce funding for the neighbourhood policy to any degree, but rather increase it everywhere, and recognise that this is a fundamental question concerning the security of all European countries. 

EaPCommunity