Between national and European foreign policy: the role of Latvia and Romania in the EU’s policy towards Central Asia

Abstract

This article explores whether and to what extent new member states of the European Union (EU) seek to pursue their national foreign policy goals towards Central Asia through the EU rather than bilaterally. To do so, it focuses on Latvia and Romania. While the article finds evidence of Romanian attempts to project its interests in the region onto the EU level, Latvia appears to rely more extensively on the EU level to pursue its goals towards Central Asia. Using insights from the literature on Europeanization of national foreign policy, the article explains this finding with reference to four variables that determine whether a member state will seek to upload its national foreign policy preferences onto the EU level, namely the perceived salience of the policy goals, the extent to which member states can carve out a niche, their perceived capabilities and the level of Europeanization of their national foreign policies.

Keywords:

• European Union
• Central Asia
• Latvia
• Romania
• foreign policy

Notes

1. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

2. The EU depicts Central Asia as its ‘far neighbourhood’ (Spaiser 2015).

3. It should be noted that in positivist case study research the goal of most-likely cases is dis-confirmatory (see e.g., Gerring 2007). In the present article, which is explorative in nature, the goal is to explore – rather than ‘disconfirm’ – the expectation that Latvia and Romania will actively use the EU level in pursuit of their policy goals towards Central Asia.

4. The small states literature defines a small state as a state that has a limited resource base, determined by factors such as geographical size, population size, economic weight, diplomatic network and military capabilities (Thorhallsson and Wivel 2006, 653, 654).

5. For more details on Latvia’s role in the NDN, see Andžāns (2013).

6. Ventspils Grain Terminal, https://www.vgt.lv/eng/info.htm.

7. Interestingly, Spaiser (2015) argues that the EU itself focuses on ‘niche’ areas of security that are not occupied by other external actors in Central Asia.

8. Latvian Presidency, https://eu2015.lv/news/insights/2439-eu-central-asia-strategy-at-the-crossroads-of-growth-in-two-continents.

9. For an interesting piece on the EU’s interest in border management in Central Asia, see Martin-Mazé (2015).

10. https://www.caep-project.org/riga2016/.

11. TAIEX stands for ‘Technical Assistance and Information Exchange’. As a distinctive EU external assistance instrument, it provides support to public administrations regarding approximation, application and enforcement of EU legislation as well as facilitating the sharing of EU best practices.

12. See https://www.euwi.net/wg/eecca.

13. Although the extent to which one can generalize based on this two-case comparison to the larger group of cases is limited, it is nevertheless relevant to reflect on what the findings might tell us about the new member states as foreign policy actors involved in EU external policy-making.