CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 47
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CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 47
www.ceps.eu/files/NW/NWatch47.pdf
Editorial by Michael Emerson: «And so Russia walked out...»
The event was the conference hosted by the European Commission in Brussels on 23 March on investment in the Ukrainian gas pipeline transit system, which is badly in need of modernization and repair, to the extent of about EUR 2 billion. Sponsors were, in addition to the Commission, the government of Ukraine, the EIB, the EBRD and World Bank. Russia was invited to attend, but not as a principal party. Its minister of energy was there, until he walked out pointedly before the final press conference at which a declaration was published, which made not a single reference to Russia or its gas. The declaration did make reference to Ukraine's plans to increase substantially the capacity of the pipeline to deliver gas to the EU. The source of the extra supplies of gas was not indicated.
We have last month advocated a different approach, namely to return to discussion of restructuring the Ukrainian trunk gas pipeline, with a tripartite (UKR-EU-RUS) consortium of energy companies, plus the EBRD, to be offered a long-tem concession by Ukraine. This has been rejected in Ukraine as a cession of sovereignty over its most precious strategic asset, and indeed in the present tense pre-electoral atmosphere in Kyiv with the open political competition between President and Prime Minister, there is an extreme politicization of any such ideas. Tactically it might have been better to have waited for the elections to pass to allow for a more sober assessment of the options. The ‘cession of sovereignty' argument is open to the counterargument that without such a tripartite, cooperative restructuring, there will be even more determination by Russia to diversify its gas pipeline options, which will mean a strategic weakening of Ukraine's position.
But the European Commission can also be criticized for having walked into this debacle. Did they really think that extra Russian gas, or Russian-transited Central Asian gas, could be assured to justify investment in the increased capacity of the Ukraine transit system – without explicit inclusion of Russia in the process?
But there is also a wider manifestation of this current in Commission policy making towards the Eastern partners and Russia. The EU summit on 19-20 March endorsed the main lines of the Commission's proposals for the Eastern Partnership. Much of this concerned bilateral relations between the EU and the six Eastern partners, which include Belarus but exclude Russia. The conclusions of this summit also confirmed the multilateral-regional part of the proposals, which foresees a complex structuring of activity from summit at senior official levels for the six together with the EU. President Voronin of Moldova sarcastically referred to this as “CIS Mark II, without Russia, controlled by the EU”. Third countries, i.e. Russia or Turkey, may be invited to join in on an ad hoc basis, if everyone agrees.
To be sure, Russia is itself largely to blame for making this development conceivable. It did so by antagonizing virtually all of its neighbours with various coercive or pressurizing measures in the last few years, quite apart from the war with Georgia which amplified all perceptions of Russia as a threat. But should the EU now deepen the political compartmentalization of Europe between Russia and all the rest, with this particular formulation of the multilateral-regional part of the Eastern Partnership? Or would the EU be better advised to turn around the formula for third country participation, with a standing invitation to both Russia and Turkey to join in these meetings? Might the EU not also go further in adding to the several geographic ‘dimensions' to its policies for the wider European space, with a final still missing ‘dimension'. This would be for actions that would overarch the EU, Russia, and various Eastern Partner and/or Central Asian states – a ‘Pan-European Dimension'? We shall return to this theme in detail shortly.