European Union–Russia Relations at the End of the Putin Presidency

At the close of Vladimir Putin's second presidential term it seemed a good time to take stock of the current relationship between Russia and the European Union (EU) and consider what are likely to be the main challenges—and hopefully also opportunities—under his successor, Dmitry Medvedev. This special issue is based on four papers presented at the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) annual conference at the University of Portsmouth in September 2007under the auspices of the newly established EU–Russia Research Network sponsored by the British Association of Slavic and East European Studies (BASEES) and UACES. The motivation for this initiative was the belief that our understanding of the dynamics of the extremely complex relationship between the EU and Russia would be enhanced by scholars from these two often rather distant academic communities collaborating on a shared research agenda. Although not part of the original project, Anne Haglund Morrissey's paper on the Northern Dimension has also been included, as it fits so well with the general themes explored in this special issue.

As all the authors testify, when Putin was elected President in 1999 there was widespread optimism that after a decade of a great deal of rhetoric but little in terms of concrete results, there was a real opportunity to develop the strategic partnership both Russia and the EU had committed themselves to construct (Gower, 2007). The EU's Common Strategy on Russia and Russia's Medium-Term Strategy for Relations between the Russian Federation and the European Union, both published in 1999, demonstrated a shared recognition of the importance of the relationship and identified a large number of areas where cooperation would be of mutual interest. Also in 1999, the Northern Dimension was launched (see article by Haglund Morrissey) and the following year the Energy Dialogue was initiated in the confident expectation that it could become the centrepiece of mutually advantageous practical cooperation (see articles by Hadfield and Romanova). The EU's new European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) also opened up possibilities for EU–Russian cooperation in the security arena.

During the following three years the agenda was inevitably dominated by the need to resolve a number of difficult and politically sensitive issues arising from the EU's planned ‘big bang’ enlargement, which would create new border restrictions on the movement of people and goods between Russia and its neighbours. However, at the EU–Russia summit in St Petersburg in May 2003 there appeared to be a significant breakthrough with the announcement of plans to intensify relations across a very broad policy spectrum to create four ‘common European spaces’: economic, leading to a free trade area; external security, including counter-terrorism, non-proliferation and crisis management; freedom, security and justice, involving cooperation between police and border authorities; research, culture and education. This was widely seen as an ambitious agenda which if achieved would institutionalise a very high level of practical cooperation and go a considerable way to integrating Russia into the wider European framework.

However, during the next five years frustratingly little was actually achieved and at the end of President Putin's term of office EU–Russia relations were widely seen as being close to crisis. High hopes had been pinned on the Finnish and German EU presidencies in the second half of 2006 and first six months of 2007, since both states made improving relations with Russia one of their key goals. Finland achieved a partial success in securing agreement on the revitalised and strengthened Northern Dimension (see Haglund Morrisey), although plans to open negotiations on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) were vetoed by Poland in protest at Russia's continuing import ban on some of its meat products. At the summit in Samara in May 2007, under the German presidency, EU–Russian relations seemed to have reached the lowest point since the end of the Cold War. It was not even possible to agree on the customary joint statement, although Chancellor Merkel and President Putin did give a lengthy and frank joint press conference at which she acknowledged that ‘there are a great many problems that have accumulated’ (Putin, 2007a). There was a marginal improvement in the atmosphere at the summit in the autumn, but as of May 2008 the negotiations on a successor to the PCA had still not been opened.

During the course of the current project a number of key themes have emerged by way of explanation for the current difficulties. Individual articles explore them in depth, but what has been striking is the way so many of them crop up in many if not all the other articles.

Not surprisingly, one is that the EU–Russian relationship has clearly been caught in the cross-currents of the distinctly frosty climate of Russia's relationship with the West during Putin's (and George Bush's) second term. Although Putin's sharpest criticisms were directed at US foreign policy in his now infamous speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007, many of the specific grievances directly concerned Europe, such as the ‘serious provocation’ of further NATO expansion, the ‘pitiable condition’ of the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) ‘interfering in the internal affairs of other countries’ (Putin, 2007b). Later that year Russia suspended the CFE Treaty on the grounds that NATO countries had taken ‘a number of steps incompatible with the letter and spirit of the Treaty and undermining the balances that lie at its core’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 2007). Although the practical consequences of the suspension, at least in the short term, are generally not seen as particularly serious, it is regarded as hugely symbolic because of the status of the CFE Treaty as one of the landmarks of the end of the Cold War. US plans to deploy components of its missile defence system in Europe and Poland and the Czech Republic's willingness to host them have also contributed to a degree of suspicion and antagonism from which it is impossible to insulate the EU–Russia relationship.

There have also been a number of specific issues involving the EU which have fed into this deterioration of the general relationship between Russia and the West. The role played by the EU per se and two of its new member states, Poland and Lithuania in particular, in the ‘orange revolution’ in Ukraine in December 2004 was deeply resented in Moscow. The recognition of Kosovo's de facto independence by most EU member states has also had a very negative impact on relations with Russia, which maintains that international law and the authority of the UN are being undermined. The fact that the EU under the Ahtisaari Plan is to assume the major responsibility for providing crisis management support for the new government further exacerbates the tensions and ensures that they will be ongoing for some years. The two articles on energy relations by Tatiana Romanova and Amelia Hadfield consider the impact of Russia's apparent willingness to cut off gas and oil supplies to exercise leverage over its neighbours. Furthermore, as Anke Schmidt-Felzmann discusses in her article, there have been—and in some cases continue to be—a number of bilateral disputes between Russia and specific EU member states, notably Estonia over the relocation of a Soviet era war memorial, the UK in the aftermath of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko and trade disputes involving Poland and Lithuania. Individually none of these issues are very serious, but cumulatively they have led to what Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson described as ‘a level of misunderstanding or even mistrust we have not seen since the end of the Cold War’ (Mandelson, 2007).

There has been a lot of speculation that we are indeed entering a ‘new Cold War’ (notably Lucas, 2008). However, the situation today differs in several key respects from the Cold War era. Firstly, neither side regards the other as a serious military threat, at least in the short to medium term. Secondly, although the concept and practice of ‘sovereign democracy’ defended by the Russian leadership differs significantly from the norms and values of liberal democracy, it in no way represents the kind of ideological challenge posed by communism (Sakwa, 2008). Thirdly, as so vividly demonstrated in all the articles in this issue, Russia's relationship with the West in general, and the EU in particular, has become so deeply institutionalised that despite the undoubted tensions and differences between them, meetings continue to be held regularly at the political and official levels and they are engaged in a process of continuous dialogue and negotiation on a huge shared agenda. Within the framework of the PCA and the road maps for the four common spaces there are biannual summits, regular meetings of the new Permanent Partnership Councils in specific policy areas, meetings of the EU–Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and numerous working parties at the official level (see Schmidt-Felzmann). Although the ‘energy dialogue’ has failed to deliver much of substance, the two parties continue to meet in a variety of fora (see Hadfield and Romanova). There are also well-developed institutionalised frameworks for practical cross-border cooperation in both the Baltic and Black Sea regions (see Flenley and Haglund Morrisey). The density of the institutionalised dialogue and cooperation marks out the current position, however difficult, as very different from the Cold War period. Contrary to the alarmist claims of commentators like Dmitri Trenin, Russia has not ‘left the West’ (Trenin, 2006), but continues to engage extensively with it. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, just one month after he made his Munich speech, Putin sent a letter to the EU not only confirming that ‘in terms of spirit and culture Russia is an integral part of European civilisation’, but also ‘the development of multifaceted ties with the EU is Russia's principled choice’ (Putin, 2007c).

However, Putin's emphasis on ‘Russia's principled choice’ is highly indicative of a second key theme running through all the articles: Russia is now confident that it can make policy choices based on the calculation of its own national interests. In other words, it has become a ‘normal’ ‘great power’, which was Putin's overriding objective when he first became president (Sakwa, 2007, p. 1). There has been a very significant change in both the tone and strategy of Russia's foreign policy since 1999, which has undoubtedly contributed to the sense in western capitals that Russia is a much more challenging partner. Today it is pursuing a much more self-confident, independent and indeed assertive foreign policy than during the previous decade. ‘A powerful Russia is once again a fact of life, and Russians know it’ (Sheer, 2008, p. 5). One of the main planks of Putin's domestic popularity has been the transformation of Russia from its weak international position in the 1990s to a force to be respected and treated as an equal on the world stage. All the authors agree that the key enabling factor for this stunning transformation has been the revenues from high world prices for gas and oil. Not only has it enabled Russia to flex its muscles as an ‘energy superpower’, but it has also strengthened the power of the centralised state and financed the modernisation of the armed forces. It has also significantly shifted the balance of power between the EU and Russia. With its buoyant economy and healthy public finance surplus Russia no longer needs EU aid and so the EU's potential leverage over her domestic developments is greatly diminished. Furthermore, the dependence of so many EU member states on Russian energy supplies has enabled Russia to pursue a ‘divide and rule’ strategy, undermining EU unity by the lure of attractive bilateral deals. Russia is determined to renegotiate the terms of its engagement with the West in general and the EU in particular. It believes, for example, that the PCA and the Energy Charter Treaty reflect the relative weakness of Russia during the Yeltsin period and are fundamentally unjust and inimical to Russia's legitimate national interests. It also rejects outright attempts by the EU to make any new agreements subject to political conditionality based on its own norms and values.

A third theme that has been explored is the claim that Russia and the EU are particularly vulnerable to mutual misunderstandings and dissonant discourse because they are such very different international actors. The most obvious difference is of course that Russia is a state, and indeed a highly centralised and authoritarian one where political power is concentrated in the hands of the president, although that may not be so certain under the new bicephalous arrangements. In contrast, the EU is a highly complex political entity, not only comprised of 27 member states, most of which continue to pursue bilateral relations with Russia, but also with policy competenceis split between the Commission and the Council. As Anke Schmidt-Felzmann shows in her article, this institutional complexity has seriously weakened the EU's capacity to ‘speak with one voice’ and weakened its effectiveness as an international actor, most especially with regard to Russia. It has also contributed to Moscow's preference to deal bilaterally with the leaders of the largest states rather than the Brussels institutions.

It has also been suggested that the EU and Russia differ in other fundamental ways as international actors, which may also account for the frequent mutual misunderstandings which all the authors see as endemic to the relationship. As Robert Kagan (2008) vividly described it: ‘Russia and the European Union are neighbours geographically. But geopolitically they live in different centuries.’ It is a similar argument to that of Robert Cooper (2004), who sees the EU belonging to the postmodern world where sovereignty, military force and balance of power politics are no longer the defining features. The EU is frequently characterised as a ‘normative’ or ‘civilian’ power, relying almost exclusively on soft power and defining its own international identity by reference to the norms and values on which it has been founded. Russia, in contrast, is seen as a classic realist power, driven by the pursuit of national interests, balance of power considerations and zero sum assumptions. This analysis helps us to understand one of the greatest causes of tensions between Russia and the EU, namely the EU's insistence that shared norms and values, as defined by itself, must be the foundation of a genuine strategic partnership. Russia, on the other hand, insists on respect for its ‘sovereign democracy’ which means that no one has the right to interfere in its internal affairs or impose political conditionality. The situation, however, is complicated by the fact that whereas the European Commission and the European Parliament insist on the normative agenda and are resistant to the move towards a more pragmatic, interest-based strategy towards Russia, many of the member states, and in particular the large ones, are realists when it comes to bilateral relations with Russia and are prepared to allow interests to trump values.

The final common theme is the impact of the 2004 and 2007 EU enlargements, which have ‘fundamentally altered the political geography of Europe and the dynamics of Russia–EU relations’ (Rumer, 2007, p. 29). The impact has been both positive and negative, although the balance is probably on the negative side of the scales. On the positive side, it has obviously brought the EU and Russia closer to each other, increased the mutual importance of EU–Russia trade in general, and energy in particular, and strengthened the argument that a whole raft of challenges facing both parties could be more effectively tackled by working together. The strengthening of the Northern Dimension and the Black Sea Synergy initiative are obvious and important examples. As Paul Flenley argues, relations with the EU's neighbours are prioritised on the basis of lobbying by member states and the Northern Dimension can clearly be seen as a consequence of Finland and Sweden's accession in 1995, reinforced by the accession of the three Baltic states in 2004. Bulgaria and Romania's accession in 2007 has also been immensely important because it means the EU is now a Black Sea littoral power, and already there are indications that it will be a major focus of the EU's foreign policy in the future.

Less positive, however, has been the geopolitical consequences of enlargement along the EU's new eastern border, which has brought the EU into direct competition with Russia for influence over the states in the post-Soviet space. What in Brussels is now referred to as the ‘shared neighbourhood’ is regarded by Russians as their own very special ‘backyard’, where historical, cultural and economic ties naturally bind states like Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Georgia into a close relationship with Moscow. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is therefore regarded with suspicion in Moscow as evidence of the EU's neo-imperialist ambitions to bring its neighbours into its civilizational orbit and weaken their ties with Moscow. It has also increased the probability that the so-called ‘frozen conflicts’ in Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan will become a major source of tension between the EU and Russia.

Enlargement has also complicated the EU–Russia relationship in terms of decision-making in the EU itself. Contrary to expectations before 2004, however, it has not been so much a question of the greater number of states making it more difficult to reach a consensus, but the fact that so many of the new member states have brought a great deal of historical baggage to the EU–Russia table. There is now quite a strong ‘anti-Russia’ lobby within the European Parliament, and to a lesser degree in other institutions, which is much more suspicious of Russia's objectives and is pressing for a much ‘firmer’ line to be taken on a whole range of issues. As Anke Schmidt-Felzmann explores in her article, several new member states have ‘uploaded’ their bilateral disputes with Russia onto the EU level and even been willing to use, or threaten to use, their veto. In these and other cases, such as the diplomatic crisis over the relocation of a Soviet era war memorial in Tallinn in April 2007, the EU (specifically the German EU presidency) has felt obliged to stress ‘solidarity’ with fellow member states even if it would damage relations with Russia. As Putin made plain at the joint press conference at the Samara EU–Russia summit, he finds it extraordinary that the new member states can have such an impact on EU policy (Putin, 2007a). It is of course another example of the difficulties arising from the fact that the EU and Russia are such very different international actors, as has already been discussed.

The five articles in this special issue explore some of the key aspects of the EU–Russia relationship. Anke Schmidt-Felzmann focuses on the EU as a foreign policy actor and why it has proved impossible to ‘speak with one voice’ in relation to its most important neighbour, despite the obvious costs in terms of effectiveness and coherence. She explores in particular the interplay between bilateral and EU level policy-making towards Russia and the relevance of size in determining the approach of individual member states. She also discusses one of the most politically sensitive and strategically important issues: the trade-off between ‘shared values’ and the national interests of member states. The articles by Paul Flenley and Anne Haglund Morrissey focus on the regional dimension of EU–Russian relations and both argue that it is potentially one of the most constructive ways of developing practical cooperation based on common interests and softening the borders between insiders and outsiders of the enlarged EU. Anne Haglund Morrisey's article focuses on the recent transformation of the Northern Dimension into a genuinely ‘shared’ policy framework with Russia, the EU, Norway and Iceland as equal partners. She is particularly interested in how this new development can be conceptualised and argues that international regime theory provides valuable insights. Paul Flenley's article sees the Northern Dimension as a possible model for the new challenge the EU is facing in the Black Sea region of building relations with Russia in a shared neighbourhood. He locates his analysis of the Black Sea Synergy initiative within the context of the potential ‘clash of new neighbourhoods’ and discusses both the causes of tensions and the potential for a regional dimension to provide solutions. The final two articles focus on energy, the policy area where many people believe the future of EU–Russian relations will ultimately be determined. They both explore Russia's and the EU's visions and goals in their respective energy security strategies, but the fact that Tatiana Romanova is writing from St Petersburg State University and Amelia Hadfield from the University of Kent makes the differences in their perspectives particularly interesting.

In addition to the thematic articles, this issue of the journal contains two further contributions. Başak Taraktaş provides an illuminating comparison of euroscepticism in the political cultures of Turkey and central and east European states, while Zhidas Daskalovski probes the dangers of Kosovan independence for the young political culture of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. The issue is rounded off by 20 book reviews and a list of books received.