Thomas de Waal, Richard Youngs.

Carnegie endowment for international peace.

Source: http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/14/reform-as-resilience-agenda-for-easternpartnership/i8k4
14 May. 2015.

Reform as resilience: An Agenda for the Eastern Partnership.

After a year of diplomacy dominated by the Ukraine-Russia conflict, the EUs Eastern
Partnership (EaP) summit in Riga on May 2122 will focus on the wider challenges of the
surrounding region. Yet most EU member states appear reluctant to bring forward new
agreements or promises to EaP states.
Many aspects of the EUs response to Russian geopolitical assertiveness have been strong
and admirably balanced. Yet there is a danger that EU policy is shaped primarily around the
Russia factor rather than around the underlying challenges that come from the EaP countries
themselves. This approach risks turning the six EaP partnersArmenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus,
Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraineinto passive objects of a perceived Russia-EU geopolitical
rivalry instead of treating them like sovereign states with their own specific identities and needs.
To rectify this danger, the EU needs to remold its support for fundamental political reform in
EaP partner statesand use this as a firmer base from which to assuage tensions with Russia.
The Riga summit should aim to make a tangible contribution to this process.

Minimalist Ambition
Since the current crisis erupted in 2013 with antigovernment protests in Ukraine, EU leaders
have repeatedly asserted that the EaP needs to move into a higher gear. In practice, however, a
number of factors are holding EU member states back from upgrading the partnership. While
some member states talk of the Riga summit representing a last chance for the EaP, others hold
positions that risk making it a nonevent.
The EaP strategy has in some ways evolved and become more sophisticated. The more for
more conceptwhich the union has prioritized since 2011 and which promises bigger EU
carrots in return for partners stronger commitment to EU principles and valuesis a sensible
advance. This incentive has drawn a useful distinction between those states that have genuine

affinities to the EU (Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine) and those that do not (Azerbaijan and
Belarus), with Armenia being something of a swing voter between those two positions.
Yet the legacy remains of the initial EaP logic that includes all six countries in a single
framework defined only by geography and proximity to Russia. This was the impression given
by the previous EaP summit in Vilnius in 2013, and the Riga summit should avoid equally
prioritizing the notion of a single six-country framework simply to declare a political success
story.
The EU would do better to focus on a select number of practical reform priorities within each
of the EaP statesas these countries have taken political trajectories that are very different from
one another.
If at the Riga summit the EU were to aim for an ambitious set of outcomes, it could quite
feasibly offer visa-free travel to Ukrainians entering its territory. The union could also propose
some kind of graduated membership deal for Moldova and Georgia that goes beyond the current
Association Agreements, which create a framework for political and economic cooperation
without holding out any prospect of EU accession.
However, in recent months the EUs level of ambition has appeared increasingly uncertain,
and doubts are growing that member states will be courageous in the Latvian capital.
Governments prevailing outlook is one of inertia and geostrategic caution.
There are a number of reasons for this restraint. Most notably, some governments seem to be
waiting to see how the conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in
eastern Ukraine evolves before significantly strengthening their focus on other EaP states.
European governments priority is to avoid rocking the boat with Russia and upsetting the
extremely fragile calm that is scarcely holding together in Ukraines eastern Donbas region
despite a ceasefire deal in February 2015.
The broad lesson that most member states seem to have drawn from the turbulence of the last
two years is that they must take greater heed of likely Russian reactions to EaP commitments.
This is because of the extent to which Russia has been able to complicate the smooth
implementation of many EaP policies, which the EU devised without considering Moscows
interests in the region. In the future, the partnership looks set to resemble a framework of
negotiated order, within which Russia has a de facto if not a formal voice. The dynamics of
assertively extending EU rules and norms are in retreat.

More practically, EU officials warn that the existing Association Agreements with Ukraine,
Georgia, and Moldova need to be implemented gradually before other prospective changes are
brought to the table. In the cases of Armenia and Belarus, the EU is now focused on very modest
offers of cooperation that fit around the still-evolving rules of the Russian-led Eurasian
Economic Union.
There is much convincing logic in the EUs prevailing caution. Yet there is considerable
scope for heightened EU ambition within the parameters of sensible geopolitical prudence.

Review Processes Are Not Sufficient

Beyond the question of ambition, there is also a risk that effective responses to fast-moving
conditions on the ground become hostage to the unions elaborate and drawn-out internal
institutional procedures and timetables. The EU has promised repeatedly to correct this oftenseen shortcoming in its foreign policy. Even the most charitable observer would be hard-pressed
to prove that it has done so.
Central to these internal procedures are the various review processes currently under way in
Brussels; these include one on the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), of which the EaP is
the Eastern dimension, and another on the EUs security strategy. There is a broad consensus
among diplomats and analysts that the EU needs to take stock of its basic approach to foreign
affairs, given the far-reaching changes unfolding in its immediate neighborhood and farther
afield and, indeed, the shifts in the tenets of effective international power. As a result, many
diplomats feel that it would be premature to forward radical new commitments in Riga before
these reviews make any headway.
Among those involved in the ENP review process, there is general agreement that EU
policies need to be more flexible and more tailored to each partner countrys domestic
specificities. This is true, but it is not a reason for delaying new action. It is not necessary to
await completion of the review processes to develop policies that are more differentiated and
effective, or for there to be a more nuanced use of conditionality and more locally owned
funding priorities.
The more important consideration is this: while the various review processes are entirely
sensible and necessary, they should not be taken to imply that a modest fine-tuning of EU
instruments suffices.

EU and member-state diplomats certainly understand the need for flexibility, ownership, and
differentiation. Yet in practice, they approach such principles as relatively modest design
modifications. These principles should not divert the EUs attention from the more viscerally
political questions with which the EaP should be grapplingquestions ranging from simmering
conflicts to rising illiberalism to corruption.
Such principles do not in themselves offer the secret to unlocking a more geopolitically
sensitive neighborhood policy. The EU needs to design its differentiation much more specifically
as part of a comprehensive focus on political reform processes. When it comes to bilateral
relations between member states and EaP countries, day-to-day politics still frequently
undermine EU officials efforts to establish more effective, flexible conditionality.

Illiberalism and State Weakness in the Neighborhood

This need for a more comprehensive approach to the Eastern neighborhood leads into another
current concern: the EU still lacks a fully political diagnosis of the root problems in the EaP
region.
The EU should not weigh its commitment to EaP countries against engagement with Russia,
as if these were two counterbalancing policy options. The EUs policies since 2013 have been
framed primarily in terms of how to respond directly to Russia. But the containment-versusengagement debate with respect to Russia provides at best a very partial lens on the
preconditions of peace and stability. The most important geopolitical question is not simply what
and how much the EU should offer to EaP partners, but what kind of states these countries will
become.
There is a deeper source of tension than the way the EU frames its policy that to some extent
has contributed to Russias choice for strategic confrontation. That is the trend of rising
illiberalism.
All six EaP countries, including the three that profess to be pro-European, suffer from serious
domestic problems. Azerbaijan has turned into an authoritarian state on the Central Asian model
and now has the worst human rights record in Europe. Belarus and Armenia have entrenched
elites that govern with a somewhat lighter hand and allow elections, but in the knowledge that
the results are preordained and that the economic and political power of the leadership is not
challenged.

Ukraines massive state problemsa powerful oligarchic class and pervasive corruption
are well-known. The fact that Ukraine is by far the largest country in the EaP also makes it much
harder for the EU and other outside actors to help Kyiv tackle these problems.
Despite being praised as a European champion and holding free elections, Moldova suffers
from endemic state corruption in which leading members of the political class are implicated.
Minority rights legislation and judicial independence exist more on paper than in reality.
Georgia is probably the best performing of the six. A precedent of clean elections seems to
have taken hold. The media and judiciary are mostly, if not fully, independent. But law
enforcement agencies still wield disproportionate power, and the country still suffers from a
culture of intolerance.
Above all, these states are unacceptably poor, and the gravity of the problems facing them
should not be underestimated. With a GDP per capita of under $4,000 each, Georgia and Ukraine
are less than one-third as wealthy as Poland. More than two decades after gaining independence,
the EaP partners are all still weak states, with high levels of poverty and unemployment and
associated socioeconomic problems. High rates of emigration have resulted in a brain drain of
professionals and created large migrant populations in Russia. A recent census in
Georgia revealed that the countrys population has declined by more than 14 percent since
2002years associated in the minds of most outsiders with a Georgian success story of reform
and economic growth.

Reform as Resilience
These socioeconomic challenges have a geopolitical implication. Russias ability to dominate
or influence EaP countries is in direct correlation to the state weakness caused by such
problemsproblems that have also helped strengthen populist and extremist parties.
The EU and its member states assert repeatedly that their most effective geostrategic policy is
to support political and economic reform in EaP partners. This is because the EU should not and
cannot seek to match Russian sources of power on a like-for-like basis. The unions influence
must be of a different order.
However, the EU remains a long way from improving the effectiveness of its support for
fundamental reform in countries in the EaP region. Two years into the current Eastern crisis, it is
difficult to see where the EUs support for reform has been massively upgraded and revamped.

In Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, support for reforms has been downgraded. In Georgia
and Moldova, it continues at a level similar to the precrisis period and has been unable to quell
the democratic pathologies that now smolder in both countries.
In Ukraine, the EU has extended additional loans and commenced a number of reform
initiatives. Yet most observers in Kyiv feel that the conflict in Donbas has reduced European
pressure on the government of President Petro Poroshenko to deepen reformsand that the EUs
failure to revise its use of conditionality means much new money is simply being poured into a
black hole of political nepotism.
While a large number of conferences and articles cursorily conclude that support for political
reform in EaP partners needs to be strengthened, their focus is primarily on the EUs Russia
strategy. There is much less focus on the detailed tactics of how the EU needs to make this
support more meaningful and effective. Yet it is at this deeper level that improvement is needed
if the EUs reform-oriented approach to geopolitics is to succeed.
The EU is right to keep the door open to engagement with Russia and to take on board some
of Moscows concerns. But the union is mistaken in thinking that it needs to dilute its support for
reforms in the EaP states as part of this equation. Supporting reform is not an anti-Russian
option. Contrary to much recent analysis, pulling back from reform support in the EaP is not a
kind of implicit prerequisite to more constructive engagement with Russia.
Some analysts argue today that the focus on reform is expendable because the nature of
geostrategy and international power has fundamentally changed. This argument is overstated
because reform processes can and should be shaped as a means of strengthening EaP partners
state resilience. Better-functioning institutions could give EaP states stronger de facto
sovereignty and the confidence to choose their own forms of strategic identitywhich in many
cases will include an element of (multivector) balance between the EU and Russia.
A much more highly prioritized and systematic focus on governance reform and on tackling
deep-lying problems would give the EaP project a strategic anchora much-needed antidote to
the growing sense of extempore shapelessness.

Toward a More Differentiated Partnership

For the EU, a corollary of this emphasis on state resilience is that it requires a yet-moredifferentiated EaP strategy. This means biting the bullet of offering Georgia, Moldova, and

Ukraine the big incentive of an eventual EU membership perspective. This could be done on
some kind of innovative, graduated basis, in full awareness that this goal cannot be realized for
perhaps fifteen or twenty years.
By the same logic, the EU should stick by its principles and not unconditionally give any
special status to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Belarus, each of which pursues illiberal domestic
policies at variance with EU norms. This position should come with the proviso that normal
foreign policy discussions will continue and that the door remains open to a more privileged
relationship in the future.
Discussions should continue on a modernization pact with Azerbaijan. Diplomacy should
advance with Belarus, especially as the sanctions the EU has imposed on the country since 2006
have not worked. These steps are important because some form of engagement is needed to
cajole regimes to contemplate a degree of reform over the medium term. With Armenia, which
came close to agreeing an Association Agreement with Brussels in 2013, discussions should
deepen on how the EU can maintain a relationship with the country since it entered the Eurasian
Economic Union in January 2015and in case that Russian-led project fails. Yet all these
avenues of engagement would best be pursued outside the framework of a privileged EaP
relationship supposedly based on commitments to shared values.
In Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the reverse side of offering a membership perspective
should be a more hardheaded EU approach to the reform agenda. In particular, all engagement
should be based on the understanding that if corruption continues at such high levels, no amount
of foreign aid or economic reform will make a difference.
EU ministers and other senior officials now routinely stress how much they support the
principle of local ownership and a more demand-led EaP. But the imprecision with which EU
officials talk of such notions suggests they have little idea of what they meanor where they
would actually take the Eastern Partnership over the longer term.
The EU certainly needs to support more demand-driven initiatives that originate from EaP
partners if it is to quell growing frustration in these countries with the union. But from an earlier
tendency to follow a uniform, Eurocentric script, the EU risks tilting to the other extreme of
molding itself in an overly ad hoc fashion to redlines drawn by regimes with less-than-stellar
democratic credentials. Giving partner regimes whatever they want is not in itself a foreign
policy. Review processes, policy documents, the EU high representative, and European

commissioners can all breezily allude to key principles. But if the EU raises expectations that are
then not fully met, its geostrategic interests will be seriously weakened. Unfulfilled expectations
will hasten, not prevent, the regions incipient de-Europeanization.
Rather than putting all hope in a revamped EaP, EU member states should use their scope for
more agile and immediate bilateral policy initiatives. Member states could easily commit to
pumping in additional funding to EaP partners by pooling new resources to maximum effect
outside the scope of slow-moving EU budgets. Despite all the official rhetoric about the EUs
unprecedented geopolitical challenge in the East, member-state governments have reduced, not
increased, their funding levels in the EaP region. Instead of waiting for yet another EaP policy
document talking of the same generic motherhood-and-apple-pie principles, national
governments could launch concrete and specifically funded new initiativesnow.
A final, very practical policy suggestion: independent analysts and civil society actors in EaP
states should turn the tables on Brussels and prepare their own progress reports on the EUto
assess the unions follow-through on its stated principles. The EU publishes progress reports
every year that take EaP partners to task for falling short of their commitments. Organizations in
the six EaP states should produce similar progress reports that monitor the EUs success or
failure in delivering on its own promises.
This kind of reform-targeted shaming might be a much bigger catalyst for concrete EU policy
improvements than any number of high-level summits that are long on rhetoric but short on
substancethe kind of imbalance one fears might prevail in Riga this May.