THE FAILURE OF THE EU EASTERN PARTNERSHIP INITIATIVE

The Eastern Partnership (EaP) was initiated by Poland and Sweden and was adopted as an eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in 2009. It comprises six post-Soviet states, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The initiative was designed to supplement the ENP and enable political and economic integration without the promise of enlargement.

The Eastern Partnership was a soft-power attempt to have post-Soviet participants engaged in the EU orbit. The process primarily employed the harmonization of those countries' legislations with EU law, introduction of EU technical standards, and an attempt to implant European values in the post-Soviet space that was still in transition.

The program's deficiencies were obvious: its unilateral orientation, an undersized budget, the prevailing bilateral relations of the EU with each of the six states over the common approach with the Eastern Partnership, and application within an amalgamation of states with diverse political setups and differing aspirations toward the European Union.  At the same time, Brussels was compensating for its current deficit of political promises within the Eastern Partnership with a broad set of cooperation tools, including liberalizations of visa regimes and the prospect of establishing a free trade zone with the EU. Notably, the European Commission's logic suggested that the Eastern Partnership countries might obtain a visa-free regime before Russia does, although the harmonization of their legislations with EU norms and rules were likely to complicate fulfillment of their effective obligations within the integration in the post-Soviet space.

The EU’s core offerings within the context of the EaP are Association Agreements (AA), Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTA), and visa liberalisation agreements. The EU has provided instruments for all three areas, ranging from financial aid to technical assistance and multilateral platforms, focusing mainly on legal approximation of partner countries . The guiding principles of the collaboration are joint ownership and conditionality, which means that both parties should set priorities together. At the same time, the scope of the assistance depends on each partner country’s performance in reforms. As a result, the EaP is in reality a relatively technical policy initiative, in stark contrast to the geopolitical dynamics of the region.

While it began with high hopes in Brussels, the EaP’s implementation over the past four years has been mostly disappointing. While Azerbaijan and Belarus showed little interest from the beginning, the EaP has also not yielded great results beyond legal approximation in the other four countries. There are different reasons for this.

On the EU’s side, they include a lack of interest from the majority of member states, a renewed focus on the southern neighbourhood due to the Arab spring, and the financial and economic crisis of the past few years. On the eastern neighbourhood’s side, even the most pro-European partner states have lost their initial enthusiasm for the EaP, due to disproportionate conditionality (e.g. a large number of conditions have been imposed simply to begin DCFTA-negotiations with Georgia and Moldova), limited attractiveness of the incentives offered (especially in the short-term) and the lack of a clear long-term strategy.

2013 started off with a large-scale political scandal in Moldova, leading to the ousting of former Prime Minister Vlad Filat, which called into question the EU’s narrative of the small republic as the “success story” of the EaP. Despite the finalisation of negotiations in 2012, the signature of an Association Agreement with Ukraine was also put on ice due to on-going EU concerns about selective justice in the country, referring mainly to the jailing of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

At the same time, Russia began to intensify its activities in the region, aiming both at preventing the planned signatures of EU-EaP agreements in Vilnius and encouraging the EaP partner states’ participation in its own Eurasian Customs Union (a Russian initiative for economic integration, intended to be expanded to a political union in the coming years).

Ahead of the Vilnius summit in November 2013, Russia’s engagement was fruitful. In September 2013, Armenia declared it no longer wanted to sign the negotiated Association Agreement with the EU, but would instead join the Eurasian Customs Union.

To the EU’s surprise, Ukraine followed Armenia’s example in mid-November, shortly before the Vilnius summit, with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych publicly declaring his country’s support for the Russian integration project. As Ukraine is by far the largest and most important country in the EaP, many saw the signature of agreements with Kiev as the litmus test of the initiative’s success.

Considering the EaP mainly functions as a technical initiative, the EU did not sufficiently take into account the “Russia factor” and the geopolitical implications. At the same time, Brussels overestimated its own importance to EaP countries. For instance, despite the fact that the EU accounts for approximately one third of Armenia’s and Ukraine’s trade, taken together, Russia and the other CIS states are equally important for both countries in terms of trade volumes.

Beyond offering further short-term benefits, such as reduced gas prices for EaP states, Russia’s leadership also increasingly made use of (credible) threats throughout 2013. For instance, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that “Russia would close its borders to goods from any country signing the EU association agreements and migrant workers would be banned from finding jobs in Russia”. Taking into account these Russian “carrots” and “sticks”, as well as the relatively high short-term costs of implementing AA, DCFTA and visa-liberalisation agreements with the EU, it is understandable why Armenia’s and Ukraine’s political elites decided to opt for the Eurasian Union.

The above-mentioned events led to a summit that could not yield the results the EU had initially hoped for. Among the few pieces of good news from Vilnius were the offer of a visa-free regime for Moldova and the initialling of Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements with Georgia and Moldova. While these results mark significant steps for both countries in their relations with Brussels, they do not make up for the dashed hopes of the EU for Armenia and especially Ukraine.

The way forward for the EU: Between geopolitics and more effective policies

As outlined recently in a number of policy papers, a revision of the EaP needs to take into account the realities mentioned above. First, when adjusting the EaP, the EU should factor in the economic (and, in some cases, political) dependence of most partner countries on Russia. Second, this also implies a re-design by the EU of short- and long-term incentives for partner countries. While agreements such as DCFTAs would benefit most EaP countries in the long-term, costs would arise for local economies in the beginning (e.g. for Moldovan farmers through increased competition with EU farmers).

Additionally, the EU has to offer a strategic perspective for EaP states: what is on the table for them after the AA’s implementation? Third, for different reasons the EU has so far largely excluded security issues from the EaP. Four out of the six EaP states are involved in internal long-running conflicts – Armenia and Azerbaijan [Nagorny-Karabakh], Georgia [Abkhazia and South Ossetia] and Moldova [Transnistria]. However, Russia continues to use these conflicts to influence the region and the EU has to think about ways of incorporating conflict resolution instruments into the EaP.

Following Vilnius, the EU needs to rethink the EaP. The approach of ‘enlargement light’ has largely failed, not only in the east but also in the south, where the EU’s other neighbourhood initiative (Union for the Mediterranean) has been even less successful in light of the Arab Spring. This will not be an easy task, though, especially since interest in the eastern neighbourhood varies widely among EU member states:

The EaP is high priority for Poland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, the United Kingdom are committed to the EaP. The EaP is low priority for France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and other Member States.  Without a reform of the EaP, the EU will not be able to achieve the initial objectives of its neighbourhood policies: creating a neighbourhood of stable and democratic states which share the EU’s fundamental values.