The EU and the Georgian crisis

EUROCOMMENT Briefing Note, Vol. 6, No. 3, September 2008. [Executive Summary]

The Georgian crisis has a long way still to run. Enough has already happened however to confirm it is one of the most serious threats to European security since the end of the Milosevic wars. It is also, like the Yugoslav crisis, a major test of the European Union which, in the absence of any other credible power broker, has been obliged to take the lead in trying to resolve the crisis. Despite uncomfortable echoes of 1991, when another Bush administration let it be known that the European Community, as it then was, should take primary responsibility in the Western Balkans, the EU's response has so far been both firm and constructive. This paper explains how and why.

It begins with an account of the EU's initial response to the crisis, which broke when President Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia on 7 August, and Russia reacted by invading Georgia. With the United Nations Security Council paralysed by Russian-US discord and the United States unwilling (and unable) to intervene on Georgia's behalf, the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) and the EU were left to clear up the mess. This Nicolas Sarkozy did by persuading both parties to accept a six-point ceasefire agreement. The agreement, which is quoted in full on page 4, is far from perfect, but the fact that both Russia and Georgia agreed to it means that it has become the basic point of reference throughout the crisis so far.

EU foreign ministers endorsed the French Presidency's action at a special meeting on 13 August and authorised both the Commission and the high representative to examine ways in which the EU could help to underpin the agreement financially and politically. Despite this show of unity, there were significant differences between the member states. The hawks, including the UK, Sweden and the EU's ten Central and Eastern European members, favoured a robust response, including sanctions, while the doves, led by Germany and France, insisted on the need to maintain a dialogue with Russia. To some observers this looked like a re-run of 2003, when the EU had been disastrously split on the eve of the Iraq war. This situation is however very different: the United States has provided Georgia with humanitarian relief and military equipment to replace what was destroyed in the war, but has left it to the EU to handle the situation diplomatically, the hawks are fewer and weaker, and the doves are both more numerous, more coherent and better connected with Washington than was the case five years ago.

The divisions within the EU were nevertheless real and threatened its credibility. Nicolas Sarkozy therefore decided to convene an extraordinary meeting of the European Council on 1 September. Not everybody approved of this decision, but Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, accompanied as it was by a series of statements by Russian leaders about Russia's rights within its sphere of influence, dispelled any remaining doubts about its relevance.

Preparations for the Council had to be improvised, given the limited time available. They were nevertheless meticulously handled by the French Presidency, which established what every member state could or could not take and maintained discreet contact with both Moscow and Washington. The result was that when the European Council met on 1 September, Sarkozy was firmly in control from beginning to end. He began by reminding his colleagues that this was the first extraordinary meeting of the heads of state and government since February 2003, when the EU had failed to agree a united front on the Iraq crisis. This time, by contrast, ‘the EU is playing a major role and is the only actor that can….We talk a lot about the EU's global importance. We now have an opportunity to demonstrate it.' He then announced that in a conversation with Medvedev on the previous evening he had agreed to lead an EU delegation to Moscow on 8 September. If this mission was to be successful, however, the European Council needed to unite around a set of Conclusions which were ‘firm, but balanced'.

During the debate that followed, a number of leaders, including in particular the Lithuanian president, criticised parts of the Presidency's draft Conclusions. There was a clear consensus however that the European Council had to demonstrate its unity. The Conclusions were therefore adopted with very few changes. Russia's invasion and its subsequent recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia

were condemned and negotiations on the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement were postponed pending the withdrawal of Russia's troops, but the EU committed itself to doing everything that it could to bring about peace, ‘including on the ground', and the possibility of continuing dialogue between the EU and Russia was kept open.

There were conflicting signals from Moscow in the days between the European Council meeting and the meeting on 8 September, with the Russian foreign ministry in particular playing an aggressive ‘bad cop' role. The four-hour meeting with Medvedev himself was also far from easy, and Sarkozy threatened to walk out on several occasions. The outcome was nevertheless highly satisfactory. The Russians agreed to a schedule for the withdrawal of their troops into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the EU undertook to send at least 200 monitors to replace the Russian troops in the buffer zones, Sarkozy, Barroso and Solana personally guaranteed Georgia's good behaviour, and a date and open-ended agenda for the international conference on ‘security and stability arrangements' in Abkhazia and South Ossetia were agreed. It was an appropriate ending to a month in which the EU had seized and maintained the diplomatic initiative.

A great deal remains to be done, however. The paper highlights five clusters of unanswered questions: loose ends in the 8 September agreement, the status question, which, though it is not mentioned, is bound to dominate the international conference on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the implications of the European Council's pledge to ‘step up relations' with both Georgia and other states in the region, relations between the EU and NATO and, at a more fundamental level still, the future of NATO itself, and EU-Russian relations in the new multipolar world.

Section 2, which is much briefer, examines the impact of the Georgian crisis on the French Presidency. France's Presidency of the EU was not exactly in the doldrums before the Georgian crisis broke. It was however far from being an assured success. Everybody was aware that the French government machine is as good as, if not better than, every other EU member state's. The political context in which the Presidency began was nevertheless far from easy. Despite months of advance publicity about what they were going to do, the French programme was looking distinctly thin by the end of June. The implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, which was to have been the centrepiece of France's six-month work, was on hold following the Irish referendum. This in turn casts doubts on the usefulness of the incoming Presidency's plan to strengthen the EU's security and defence policy. As for the Mediterranean Union, Angela Merkel had driven a coach and horses through the scheme which Nicolas Sarkozy had originally espoused, and all that appeared to be left was a showy summit in Paris in July and a great deal of low-key and unrewarding work on Barcelona bis.

As if these mishaps to France's substantive priorities were not enough, President Sarkozy himself had managed in his first 15 months in office to provoke apprehension if not mistrust amongst virtually all his colleagues in the European Council. Demagogy, it seemed, might crowd out sound management.

There were therefore big question marks over the French Presidency, and more particularly the French president himself, which developments in July did not resolve. The crisis in Georgia has however transformed the situation. The outcome of the crisis is still far from certain. However, as a result of his handling of the crisis, Sarkozy's standing amongst his peers has changed significantly. It would be going too far to say that he is now universally trusted. He is however widely admired. The Georgian crisis has therefore in a very real sense ‘made' the French Presidency.

The paper finishes with a brief reflection on the actual and potential role of the Presidency as such in the EU's emergence as a global player. The fact that France held the Presidency when war broke out was singularly fortunate and it is difficult to imagine many, if any, other member states handling this crisis as well. It is nevertheless important to acknowledge that the French government could only have done what it has done because of the additional authority and leverage which it acquired through the Presidency. The EU needed the French, but the French also needed the EU. What is true of France is furthermore true of Germany and the UK. None of the Big Three is a great power in today's multipolar world.

Can the EU guarantee the same quality of response to a major international crisis in the future however if one of the Big Three does not happen to be in charge? The answer is yes – as long as the Lisbon Treaty is ratified and implemented in an intelligent and imaginative way. There are flaws in the treaty, but the provisions regarding both the president of the European Council and the high representative on the one hand and the External Action Service on the other could provide the EU with the capacity that it needs to meet the challenges of the multipolar world.

Peter Ludlow
Chairman of Eurocomment