CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 45
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CEPS European Neighbourhood Watch. Issue 45
www.ceps.eu/files/NW/NWatch45.pdf
Editorial by Michael Emerson: «Just Monitoring Crises»
The European neighbourhood has now produced three short conflicts in six months, with the war over Gaza and the gas war over Ukraine this January adding to last August’s war in Georgia. In all three cases the EU has been deploying or offering the monitors: actually deploying teams of monitors in Georgia and Ukraine, and offering to resume the Rafah border mission in Gaza. This may be taken as a complement to the EU’s reputation for trustworthiness and honesty. But that is the most that can be said. This is the EU that presents itself on the world stage like a giant Switzerland. But the EU says it wants to be a global actor, even the leading actor of the European continent.
The main action seen this month in Georgia are the Russian announcements to build a new naval base in Ochamchire on the Abkhazian Black Sea coast, and to deploy military aircraft at the old Gudauta military base – Russia’s response to Georgia’s NATO aspirations. The South Ossetia peace talks sponsored by the EU, UN and OSCE go nowhere fast.
The Ukraine gas crisis presents the clearest opportunities for action: internally to complete the gas market, for example with missing pipeline connections to be built (e.g. from Poland to the Baltic states, and through South-east Europe to Bulgaria). Bulgaria will also be on the map of the Nabucco pipeline, which was subject to a summit conference this month, and may have moved a bit closer to realisation. But for the Ukraine pipeline there is so far no sign of strategic action, only an investor conference planned for March, with no apparent move to restructure its corporate organization beyond the exit of the infamous Rosukrenergo intermediary. It is argued in a CEPS paper (link below) that the Ukrainian trunk pipeline should be subject to a new long-term concession agreement, for which Ukrainian, Russian and European energy companies and the EBRD would form a consortium, supported by a tri-partite (EU-Ukrainian-Russian) Treaty, and which would ensure the financing of necessary
rehabilitation work and impeccable corporate governance. Ukrainian commentators argue against ‘giving away this strategic asset’: but unless something like this is engaged credibly and fast the action will be seen in the building of the Nord and South Stream pipelines, reducing the value of the Ukrainian pipeline and increasing Ukraine’s exposure to Russian gas blackmail. The agenda for possible and urgently needed action is thus wide open and substantial.
The Gaza crisis calls for an important revision of the EU policy towards the Israel-Palestinian conflict. As is argued in another CEPS paper (link below) there has to be engagement with Hamas, which both Norway and Russia have sustained without becoming outcasts on the world diplomatic stage. The EU did agree with Israel to suspend during the January war talks over a new advanced agreement, but the conditions for its resumption – if any - are not evident. The conditions should include Israel’s coming forward with an offer on the fundamentals of a peace settlement, including a clear stop to settlement expansion and 1 for 1 land compensation for any settlements that would be kept within the pre-1967 map of the West Bank. Israel’s complicated coalition politics may explain but do not justify why Israel fails to show credible intentions for a real peace settlement. Instead it prefers to move from one alibi to another: first it was Yasser Arafat, now it is Hamas. The EU’s own complicated internal coalition politics equally explain but do not justify its performance, which just monitors the status quo and helps with humanitarian aid, and thereby contradicts its declarations in favour of a principled foreign policy and undermines its political reputation in the entire Muslim world.