The EU foreign policy is failing even in areas where it should be strongest – in neighbouring states. While it is no surprise that Belarus, with its closed off authoritarian regime, refuses to take instruction from Brussels, it is worrying that this trend is spreading to other states that form the Eastern Partnership. Countries that until recently were star pupils, like Ukraine and Georgia, are slipping away from the EU sphere of influence and relapsing into their old undemocratic ways. Hopes for improvements in Armenia and Azerbaijan are all but lost.
To give credit where credit is due, there is little that the EU can do on Belarus that it hasn’t already done – smart sanctions are in place, as well as a visa ban for over 200 officials involved with Lukashenko’s regime. At the same time, increased financial support to civil society is being provided, and some neighbouring EU member states (Poland, Latvia and Lithuania) have signed agreements on local border traffic to ease entry for Belorussian citizens (although only the Latvian one has been ratified by both sides). Despite these measures, repressions continue, with civil liberties curtailed and political opponents held incommunicado as prisoners of conscience. Two EU member states have worsened this situation by inadvertently helping the regime – this summer the financial ministries of Poland and Lithuania handed over bank details of one of the most prominent Belarusian human rights defenders, Ales Bialecki, on demand of the Belarus authorities, without even thinking of checking this with their respective Ministries of Foreign Affairs. The handover resulted in Bialecki’s arrest and the staging of a politically motivated trial against him, on the pretext of tax evasion. While the EU cannot directly be blamed for the actions of its individual member states, this symbolises the mismatch between its foreign policy goals and its member states’ willingness and ability to execute them.
However, the real failure of EU foreign policy towards its eastern neighbours is its inability to promote its ideals in other, formerly more open and EU-friendly countries forming the Eastern Partnership – Ukraine and Georgia. In the period following the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004, Ukraine’s single foreign policy obsession became its aspiration to join the EU and the recognition of that aspiration by the bloc. The EU spent the following six years schizophrenically rebuffing these advances and at the same time trying to encourage the pro-democratic turn taken by the country. Now, following the election for president of the Orange revolution antagonist, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2010 Ukraine appears disenchanted with the elusive European dream. The country is increasingly unconcerned with neither EU membership nor rule of law, recently demonstrated by the highly politicised trial of formal prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Georgia, which offered great promises up until a few years ago, has also turned towards authoritarianism and no longer pines for close affiliation with the member states. Azerbaijan, although admittedly never a civil liberties champion, has taken a turn for the worse in 2011, with Arab Spring-inspired protests ruthlessly quashed by security forces and dozens of political activists and bloggers being imprisoned for speaking out against the regime. And yet Catherine Ashton did not see the situation as being serious enough to mention in her press statement during a recent visit to the country. She did however mention the Eurovision song contest and the excellent EU-Azerbaijan cooperation in the field of energy. We all have our priorities.
If the EU does not react to (already) serious abuses of human rights, the rule of law and the democratic process in Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, how can it expect or any kind of transference process to take place in Belarus? It is failing to significantly revise its policies towards Eastern Europe or offer the states concerned a viable alternative to which they could turn – not only the choice between the impossible fight for full membership and a loose association status. If it continues this way, the EU will willingly relinquish its influence over the whole region.
Comments (0)