Belarus as EU neighbor: A firm authoritarian political system with little chances for the opposition
Through the decades, Belarus’ political system has remained extremely centralized but stable. At least the country’s undemocratic system has not become radically worse over the last decade.
Since the mid-1990s the EU has adopted a two-track approach to the former socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe. Some were offered an EU accession perspective and ‘Europe Agreements’ designed to bring those countries into the fold of the EU, while others were offered a rapprochement and potential integration with, not into, the EU in the form of Partnership and Cooperation Agreements signed between 1994 and 1996 with Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. The EU’s policy towards its neighbours was further developed in the early 2000s with the launch of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). In the course of these two decades the EU’s eastern neighbours have undergone significant changes as they experienced a series of economic, political and security crises, albeit to a much less severe degree than the EU’s southern neighbours. Yet, beyond the fog of crisis, some mid- to long-term trends – both negative and positive – have sometimes been overlooked.
This Chaillot Paper charts the changes that have taken place in the countries neighboring the EU, including Belarus over the past two decades, and analyses how the upheavals of recent years have altered the EU’s relationship with and approach to its eastern and southern neighbours. We will go through all sectors of the analysis by the example of Belarus.
Democracy trends
The authors of the paper mark that in comparison with the more or less semi-democratic ‘normal’ politics, in the case of the countries ruled by authoritarian regimes a bleaker picture emerges. Using the same Freedom House democracy score indicates that Belarus remained at the bad, but stable, level of 6.5 points – a consolidated authoritarian system. If anything Lukashenka’s latest presidential elections in October 2015 were less contested than ever before. Since 2002, the ranking of the Belarusian media in the Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index (see Figure 2) has fallen from 124th to 157th place. Belarus’ political system has remained extremely centralized but stable. At least the country’s undemocratic system has not become radically worse over the last decade.
Economic governance trends
Using the World Bank’s (Cost of) Doing Business ranking as a proxy indicator of governance reforms (although not democracy), reveals that all of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries improved over the last decade – some of them quite significantly, as in the case of Georgia, but also Armenia and Belarus. The star performer is Georgia, which rose from 100th place in the world in 2006 to 15th a decade later. Armenia and Belarus dramatically improved their ranking by 40 and 49 places in this global rating in the space of a decade, whereas Ukraine and Moldova moved up the rankings by 28 and 20 places respectively. Thus it seems clear that neither a country’s aspirations to forge closer ties with the EU nor its democracy levels seem to be strongly correlated with governance reforms.
From corruption to state capture
There has also been no obvious link between anti-corruption and foreign policy orientation in the short term. Thus, Ukraine and Belarus were both ranked 107th in 2005. By 2014 Belarus had fallen to 119th place, and Ukraine had sunk to 142nd. Again corruption perception levels increased in both, but in the nominally pro-EU Ukraine corruption increased more than in Belarus. The only exception to this trend, and an outstanding one, is Georgia, which improved its corruption ranking from 130th place in 2005 to 50th in 2014.
Trade growth patterns
Belarus and Armenia scored worst in terms of their export capacity to the EU. Both countries exported less to the EU than a decade ago. They had a much better trade dynamic in their relations with Russia, as Armenia registered an almost five-fold increase in its exports to Russia (382% between 2004 and 2014), albeit from a low base. Belarus’s exports to Russia increased by 134%, i.e. they more than doubled in the same period.
The effects of visa facilitation
The available numbers are quite telling in this respect. They reveal a number of interesting aspects, such as the fact that Belarus – where approximately 5% of all Schengen visas are issued – overtook Turkey in 2012 as the fourth-biggest recipient of Schengen visas (Russia is the first recipient of Schengen visas, and 40% of Schengen visas worldwide are issued in Russia). It is in the countries on the EU’s eastern flank that member states conduct some of their biggest consular operations. For example, the Polish consulate in Lviv, Western Ukraine or the Lithuanian consulate in Minsk, Belarus, each issue roughly 1% of the total number of Schengen visas worldwide. Only seven other EU consulates in the world issue more Schengen visas (and these are all located in Moscow and Saint Petersburg).
Belarus, despite not having a visa facilitation agreement, has shown particularly fast rates of growth of visa issuance. The number of Schengen visas issued in Belarus grew almost 2.4 times between 2009 and 2014 (i.e. more than doubled), putting Belarus fourth in the global rating of Schengen visa recipients after Russia, Ukraine and China, and right ahead of Turkey. Belarus is also the country with the lowest visa refusal rate in the world and is one of the highest visa recipients per capita.
Looking east
Belarus, Azerbaijan and (to a lesser extent) Armenia have increasingly entrenched authoritarian political systems where the prospect of opposition forces coming to power through electoral means seems more and more remote.
But beyond that, Armenia and Belarus seem to have shown better levels of economic governance than the more pluralist (and pro-EU) Ukraine and Moldova.
Where there has been less progress is in trade relations with Armenia and Belarus, which currently export less to the EU than a decade ago.
You can read the whole paper and find out about other countries-neighbors of the EU here.
Originally published at the European Union Institute for Security Studies
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