The EU–Russia Strategic Partnership: Challenging the Normative Argument

Abstract

Russia–EU relations have often been presented in terms of a normative gap, with the EU appearing as a normative and Russia as a non-normative actor. This article critically analyses this ‘normative argument’ which sees this gap as the cause of tensions. Pleading for a less dichotomous approach to norms and interests, it challenges the normative argument on the basis of the assumed congruence between the norm-driven input and norm-promoting output of European foreign policy. As an alternative, the article explores how the normative agenda in Eastern Europe serves instrumental purposes. Selective norm promotion has the potential to change the hierarchy of identities among post-Soviet states.

Notes

¹ The overlap mainly stems from the fact that the very definition of ‘sovereign’ or traditional actors associates them with interests, while ‘post-sovereign’ actors are associated with norms. See for example Haukkala (2010, p. 25).

² Manners discerns five core norms characterising the EU: peace, liberty, democracy, rule of law and human rights (Manners 2002, p. 242). He also lists four ‘minor’ and ‘more contested’ norms: social solidarity, anti-discrimination, sustainable development and good governance (Manners 2002, pp. 242–43).

³ Manners also adds a fourth, normative, dimension stating that the EU should focus on norms. As this is irrelevant for this article, we do not include this in our analysis.

⁴ The normative basis ‘is a crucial constitutive feature of the EU’ (Manners 2002, p. 252).

⁵ ‘The EU acts to change norms in the international system’ (Manners 2002, p. 252).

⁶ ‘The EU can be conceptualized as a changer of norms in the international system’ (Manners 2002, p. 252).

⁷ See for example Ferrero-Waldner (2006) or Ashton (2011b).

⁸ Also before 2004 the EU did not back up its normative policy with sanctions and conditionality towards Russia was at best weak. The only time that the EU backed up its policy with sanctions was when Russia fought its second war in Chechnya in 1999 and sanctions were declared in January 2000. Even then the sanctions were very limited and of a largely symbolic nature.

⁹ Author's interviews with senior Ukrainian officials in Brussels and Kyiv, 7 and 21 June 2010.

¹⁰ Very modest initiatives have been taken to integrate Russia into some Eastern Partnership initiatives. In 2010 an ‘Information and Coordination Group’ was set up, nicknamed the ‘group of friends of the Eastern Partnership’. This is an informal group in which the EU and Russia can inform each other and coordinate initiatives in their common neighbourhood.

¹¹ The agreement was completed in December 2011, but was not initialled because of the political situation in Ukraine.

¹² V. Chizhov, Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the EU, lecture at the Brussels School of International Studies, Brussels, 16 February 2011.

¹³ It goes without saying that the same openness about preferences in the region and a more constructive rhetoric are needed just as much in Moscow.