Neighbours, but not Neighbourly?
The EU’s relations with the Neighbourhood.

10-11 October 2008

Leiden University,
Campus Den Haag, Department of EU Studies,
Montesquieu Institute

On Friday 10 and Saturday 11 October 2008, an international conference on the EU Neighbourhood Policy was held in the Hague. At the conference, which was opened by the Dutch Minister of European Affairs, Frans Timmermans, a group of international experts deliberated on the subject. The various aspects of the European Neighbourhood Policy were approached through different regional perspectives. Amongst others, speakers from Russia, the Ukraine, Morocco and Egypt took the stage. For a extensive summar, see below.

The conference started at the Dutch press office, Nieuwspoort, next to the Parliament. It was opened by the Minister for European Affairs, Frans Timmermans. After surveying the problems, both short- and long-term, with which Europe and the World were confronted, he suggested that this could be “Europe’s century”. The human capital and the variety of models and experience upon which it could draw placed it favourably to meet the challenges. However, he stressed that Europe could only be effective if it created a zone of stability, welfare and optimism among its immediate neighbours and he saw the ENP as a means to give effect to this goal. After his short introduction, the Minister spent some time answering questions from the floor and in response to one, he affirmed his strong support for eventual Turkish membership of the Union but he resisted suggestions that membership might eventually also be extended to non-European countries.

It soon transpired that the use of the theme song from the TV-soap “Neighbours” to introduce the next presentation had been intended ironically. Professor Richard Griffiths started his talk by suggesting that, viewed in terms of a potential market, the EU was expending a disproportionate share of its energies into states of minor economic importance to itself. Russia alone was more important than the other ENP states combined, and here the policy was already going badly wrong. He conceded that the EU’s policies towards its neighbours was not primarily the enhancement of EU markets but the creation of a zone of social and political stability. Even so, he questioned whether, in the absence of the prospect of eventual EU membership, the instruments were sufficient to match the rhetoric. He suggested that institutions generally reflected the societies in which they were rooted, and argued that “you cannot expect to  grow institutions by throwing around handfuls of Euros”.

The perspective of a European Parliament Representative was offered by Mr. Sjerp van der Vaart starting with a rather critical questioning of the ENP’s real aim. To answer the issue, professionals often compare the ENP to an enlargement process of the EU ambiguously without the actual accession as a finalité. According to Mr. van der Vaart, the political reality is indeed that one of ENP’s function is to keep Russia out of the coordination of the regions. Going along with this statement, one could also say that the ENP is a sub-field of the EU’s foreign policy. If the ENP will not define clearly its own motivations, he added alarmingly, if the policy will fail to offer a more clear-cut incentive structure, the relationships with these countries can “easily erode” in the near future. To prevent this, the Barcelona process has to be re-launched with a more effective action plan package, the union of the Black Sea area has to be supported and non-governmental decision making part of the European Parliament needs to be used to scrutinise the process.

The basic nature of an empire is the existence of a superior civilization which, in the belief of its superiority, expands and delivers its rule to further and further territories. In his fascinating presentation, Dr. Hans Vollaard argued that the ENP is a clear sign of the imperialistic nature of the EU, indeed a sign of an “imperialism by stealth”. Being very contradictory, he called the union “a non-imperial empire”, a new idea which we have not seen during the course of history. Rightfully, the question was immediately raised by the audience: if the EU is an empire indeed, who is the ruler then? The governing force of the “EU-empire” is not one person or institution as history shows examples for; but more an idea or a set of ideas. Thus, the ENP has to reconsider its strategy when defining aims and methods to adjust to the needs of the ENP regions in question.

”It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence”, Dr Adam Lazowski opened his presentation with a very useful Sherlock Holmes quote. In his paper, he analysed how the action plans of the ENP work or could work in practice. The conclusions were alarmingly critical, as he proved that the action plans touch upon all general aspects from the delivery of peace and democracy to the economic development of the region. As a consequence, the plans are very vague and broad in the sense of the expected results, targets. When „heading towards a common market in energy and later possibly transport”, as Dr. Lazowski pointed it out, the ENP cannot afford the luxury of not being specific. Soft law instruments have to be introduced and a system of scrutiny. Most importantly, he added, both sides need to agree on the new order of getting closer to each other. 

On the Friday afternoon, the conference moved to the sumptuous location of the 17th century debating chamber of the Dutch senate. Opening the second session, Professor Ahmed Farouk Ghoneim was looking for answers from the viewpoint of an economist; moreover, an Egyptian economist. In his very interesting presentation - in which he gave us the opinion of an ENP country - he evaluated the process from EU Association Agreements to the EU Neighbourhood  Policy and the Mediterranean Union. Prof Ghoneim pointed out that Egypt does not really benefit from the theoretically enhanced and strengthened relationship with the EU, since both the Association Agreements and the ENP had the Barcelona process as their base and both were full of “vague words” and too general objectives in their action plans. The only difference he drew our attention to was that the ENP clearly stated that Egypt had no prospects for accession. Thus, due to the lack of any attractive offer, Egypt had no incentive to join the ENP. However, according to Prof Ghoneim, Egypt had no option to say ‘no’, since the EU is a far too important trading partner for Egypt. As a conclusion, he advised that the ENP should offer an “á la carte type of cooperation” for the ENP countries and needs to create an individual basis for restructuring.  

The relationship between the EU and Morocco was described in Professor Mehdi Lahlou’s presentation. After a brief background of the cooperation, he concluded that the Barcelona process has had no proper effects so far as political and religious radicalism shows a growing tendency, there is still a lack of regional institutions and the intra-trade rates are very low. He asked for a deeper attention from the EU, as he stated, “Africa is still much more vulnerable to global crisis” He also criticised the EU approach to Morocco’s migration problem. The European Pact on Migration, according to the professor, had an “extremely egoistic approach”. As he finished his presentation, ”Europe has to come back to Africa”

"Let’s talk about money!” That’s how Ms Ida Petter opened the third session starting with her presentation about the financial aspects of the European Neighbourhood Policy Instrument (ENPI). To emphasise the importance of neighbourly relations, Ms Petter cited the oldest western historical definition of a neighbour by Hesiod (700BC): “whoever has a share in a fine neighbour has a share in good value; not even a cow would be lost, if the neighbour were not bad” The question raised was whether the funds of the ENPI have added value. As she pointed out, the 12.8 billion euros available between 2007-2013 are no peanuts, though this sum seems small because it is only 1.4% of the EU budget. It is also difficult to assess added value, since there are no benchmarks set. She also criticised the lack of coherency in ENPI spending, lack of coercive elements and no proper feedback on the expenditure. As she advised, if the EU wants visibility, there are also non-financial possibilities for this purpose. In addition, blending EU grants with loans from international financial institutions is also a worthwhile exercise. When allocating the ENPI funds, the keyword is flexibility, according to “the needs and willingness of partner countries.”

Mr Evert Faber van der Meulen was analysing the possibilities of export of the energy and climate change regulation system to the ENP regions. After going through several regulatory frameworks, he concluded that regulation as such is probably not an answer as the rule of law might be too weak in the ENP countries. He rather advised to apply a sub-sectoral approach and to find synergies like the one of  strategic and financial interests. During his case study of Egypt, Mr van der Meulen also compared strengths and weaknesses of the country to come up with a common framework with the EU. As a conclusion, he advised to concentrate on the renewable energy export potential of the country and try to create an interdependency on each other.

The concluding remarks of the day were made by Mr. Nico Wegter, former EU Commission representative in the Netherlands. As an ex-civil servant, his speech had two perspectives. First, the Commission’s and then his own. “Has the EU taken itself seriously about the ENP?”, Mr. Wegter asked. Is there a common understanding about what had happened in the ENP? While “there is a mood of optimism and a sense of pragmatism in Commission papers”, the ENP countries might be losing their trust in the motivation of the EU. Although, there are high growth rates in the countries, there is no evidence to prove that it is the effect of the ENP. While there is an initiative of regional cooperation in the Black Sea area, there is again no proof about the ENP’s contribution. Mr. Wegter then gave a good overview about the levels of action plan implementation in the ENP countries, however, he also mentioned the aforementioned weakness of the plans; they are too general. Moreover, he criticised the ‘one policy fits all’ problem of the ENP as the southern and eastern region is completely different from each other; they are “apples and pears”. The ENP lacks a proper finalité, he stated, and the way out is a “re-discussion of the policy“, finding new means and aims. Finally, he remembered when trying to find a framework of relationship for the Central and Eastern European countries and in a way, he found similarities, as the EU was confused about what they could offer and what they could not.

On Saturday, the conference returned to the more familiar setting on the facilities of Campus Den Haag. Ms Olena Prystayko surveyed the four “spaces” (trade, freedom, security, education and culture) agreed with Russia in 2000 and implemented in 2004. The trade space was going well, but since Russia was not a WTO member, much depended on its goodwill. The freedom space had produced a new agreement, but it was still too early to assess its effectiveness and she acknowledged that there had been little progress in human rights. On matters of security, the partnership with Russia was greatly complicated in that both countries shared neighbours, and that Russia seemed more active (and also more ready, where necessary, to use pressure) than did the EU. In the domain of education, the main achievement was Russia’s adoption of the Bologna process. As far as the energy dialogue was concerned, not much had been achieved, due in some ensure to Russia’s reluctance to sign the transit protocol. A new Partnership and Cooperation agreement but it contained contradictions in concept and content that might too render it unfruitful.

Professor Alexander Selivanov presented a review of the EU’s relations with Russia in the aftermath of its conflict with Georgia. However, his framework was mainly based on how the international and mostly the European media accepted and interpreted the Russian action against Georgia. He compared the media coverage and political opinions on the US military interventions in Afghanistan and later in Iraq to the recent Georgian conflict with Russia. As he pointed out, the usual business cooperation scenario is not possible in the future with the USA as Russia feels very uncomfortable with the NATO’s Eastern expansion intentions. “Russia cannot ignore that it has been becoming surrounded by missiles”, he stated firmly. However, he gave some alternatives when talking about the EU-Russia relations. The solution could be to concentrate more on a possible new treaty for a European security system and an interdependency on each other.

How vast is the difference between the Ukrainian and the EU perception of the new Enhanced Association Agreement was explained by Dr. Roman Petrov in his presentation about future EU-Ukraine agreements. The main issue where the understanding differs so much is the possibility of a future accession. While certain Ukrainian political spheres are very enthusiastic about the theoretically enhanced and deepened agreement offering a “free trade area plus” and a joint promise of political association and close economic integration, the EU clearly sees no membership promise and more binding nature of the agreement. Ukraine, after its recent entry to the WTO, welcomes the political dialogue the EU has started. As Dr. Petrov summarised, there is a need for cross-pillar agreements, regional initiatives from the EU’s side, while Ukraine will need to strengthen the implementation of the acqui communitaire in international law.

Ms Beatrix Futak-Campbell presented her research about the different perceptions of  European identity by EU professionals. On the basis of a large number of interviews, she was examining what factors would make a nation European. Through four samples, she showed how people perceive countries to be European from three aspects. Firstly, the cultural heritage of Europe, where it was proved that Russian culture definitely belongs to Europe but no clear standpoint about Russia being European. Secondly, from the geographical aspect there was again no clear answer where Europe’s eastern border was, however the answer was definite on north-African countries: non-European. Thirdly, there was a sample shown that architecture and the overall outlook of towns and landscapes can also be a factor.

The afternoon session was opened by Dr. Steven Blockmans on the matter of the ENP’s conflict resolution potential. Through the case study of ex-Yugoslavia, he drew attention to the EU’s non-military nature in conflict management. He also emphasised that ENP’s geographical scope and level of ambition to deal with conflicts are notable. However, there is a need to add “specific devices to diplomacy, flash to the bones”. It is clear that EU has not developed its own initiative of conflict resolution, only takes up a so-called observer status. As a conclusion, he pointed out three main challenges. First of all, in the conflict area, there are always the partner’s preferences to resolve conflicts so the value added is a question. Secondly, there is no proper policy coherence inside the EU; member states, as well as, institutions are divided  in a clear policy. Thirdly, the EU also has to take regional actors like Russia or Turkey into consideration. If the EU would like to have pure conflict resolution potential, it needs to readapt not only the aims but the means of the ENP.

Mr. Peter Van Elsuwege addressed the question of the ENP’s effort to provide added value to the Black Sea regional cooperation initiative. Firstly, he pointed out how difficult this attempt has been since there is a vast difference among the Black Sea countries. Different aims, sizes, histories and political status characterise the participants. Hence the failure or rather inefficiency of the numerous cooperation attempts already started in the early 1990s. As Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, it raised awareness again since the region has become the EU’s own strategic interest. To overcome the challenges of different legal frameworks, expectations and ambitions of the region, Mr Van Elsuwege compared the process to the Baltic cooperation to drew lessons for the Black Sea region. New institutional structure, he concluded, as well as, proper funding mechanisms should be set up to reach a “sector-oriented, project-based operational partnership”.

The last presentation of the day introduced us to the world of Brussels business lobby groups of neighbouring countries. Ms. Mieke Van Westing analysed how the Central and Eastern European countries have practiced their European level lobby before their accession.  As the Brussels and national interest representation differs greatly in their pattern and channels of influence, non-EU interest groups need to adapt to the different environment in the European level. That firstly means, Ms. Van Westing stated, a need for skills and strategic approach, contacts and expenditure. There are various possibilities to enter the lobby world of Brussels; via national government bodies, diplomatic missions, EU umbrella organisation. Also interest groups might outsource the lobby to certain consultancy agencies. Moreover, there could be direct representation office in Brussels, however, this proves very expensive. Thus, the problems for non-members of the EU, as Ms. Van Westing summarised, could be resources, access and the elitist nature of the process.