http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5643-0398
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ABSTRACT
This article looks into Armenia's and Belarus’ engagement with the European Union's (EU) and Russia's conditionalities, the two EU Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries that are also members of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). While paying attention to political, economic (including energy and technical) as well as security dimensions of the EU's and Russia's approaches, as proposed in the present special section, the article demonstrates that the conditionalities extended by the EU and Russia to the two countries in question have differed. In their turn, Armenia and Belarus have reacted differently to Russia's and the EU's conditionalities. Against the backdrop of the changing significance ascribed to both the EU's and Russia's policies towards their common neighbourhood since the 1990s, the present contribution identifies and analyses factors that account for the diverging positions of Armenia and Belarus, including the type of regime, the geopolitical considerations, the stakes in the economic and energy spheres and the predisposition to integration. The article shows that in the resulting complex context, Armenia and Belarus have been able to influence the shape and content of the EU's and Russia's conditionalities, although in a different way and to a different extent.
ORCID
Alena Vieira http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5643-0398
Notes
1 This contribution is partly supported by the Research Center in Political Science (CICP) (UID/CPO/00758/2013) and the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science through national funds. The authors would like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their time and effort leading to the present publication.
2 Russia-Belarus military alliance established by the Union Treaty (1997) has with time evolved into a common defence system, including air defence and joint military planning (Vieira, Citation2014). Russia-Armenia security relations initially based on a Friendship Treaty (1997) for mutual assistance in case of a potential military attack, allowing Russian guards to protect Armenia's borders with Iran and Turkey (Vasilyan, Citation2010b), have more recently developed towards a joint air defence system agreement (2015) and a Joint Task Force agreement (2016) (Vasilyan, Citation2018). Both Armenia and Belarus are highly dependent on the Russian energy. In addition to the natural gas, Russia's oil, refined and exported to the EU, generates critical export revenue for Belarus (Balmaceda, Citation2014).
3 While Armenia has demonstrated aspiration to integrate more closely with the EU, coming close to pre-signing the AA, including the DCFTA, but retreating from this foreign policy course in 2013 (Vasilyan, Citation2017) and eventually signing the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA), Belarus has only participated in the multilateral track of the EaP, and its relations with the EU evolved without a PCA (Vieira, Citation2014).
4 Besides the EaP states, TACIS also covered Russia and the Central Asian countries.
5 The EED was established in 2013 replicating the US National Endowment for Democracy (Vasilyan, Citation2018).
6 The Minsk Group was a body set-up at the 1994 Budapest summit to deal with the mediation process of this conflict.
7 Both parties displayed willingness to exert influence via agenda-setting. Eventually, although Sweden remained a participating state of the Minsk Group, it was replaced by France as a co-chair in 1996 (Vasilyan, Citation2013). Besides the co-chairing Russia, France and the United States (US), the Minsk Group comprises Sweden, Germany, Italy, Finland, as well as Belarus and Turkey as participating states.
8 These clauses linked upholding human rights and democracy to an increase in trade access and deepening of relations in general, while also stipulating a unilateral suspension of the agreement in the event of its ‘material breach’ (Bosse, Citation2012, p. 369; Hillion, Citation2000, p. 1220).
9 EU sanctions imposed on Belarus since 1996 included visa bans, freezing of assets of certain individuals, economic sanctions on Belarusian companies, withdrawal of privileges under the Generalised System of Preferences, in addition to limiting the political dialogue. Sanctions never included a stoppage of the oil and/or gas flow into the EU, even ‘given the fact that income from such sales was so critical for the Lukashenka regime’ (Balmaceda, Citation2014, p. 63).
10 In 2006, the difference in pricing policy for the natural gas of Ukraine versus Belarus constituted 55 versus USD 95 per thousand cubic metres (Balmaceda, Citation2014).
11 These revisions covered the time period of Armenia's participation in the EaP (see below).
12 The price was lowered from USD 286 for thousand cubic metres in 2011 to 166 per thousand cubic metres in 2012.
13 Being among the oldest ethnic civilisations, Armenia thrived as a kingdom in the 1st century BC during the reign of Tigran the Great, then briefly in 1918–1920 as a part of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, afterwards of the Transcaucasian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic and subsequently, as the ASSR.
14 The number of Armenians residing abroad surpasses the number of those in the country by about twice.
15 The EU approach has differed from the approach of the US, which imposed negative conditionality on Armenia (Vasilyan, Citation2010c).
16 This Programme covering travel, housing, job placement, among other factors was however ceased in 2012 due to the concerns raised by the Armenian government reflecting the public discontent over emigration (Hakobyan, Citation2012).
17 The civic rallies carried out since November 2007 have been against potentially negative environmental consequences of mining. The illegal construction in the Mashtotz Park in Yerevan led to protests in February 2012. Further, rallies were held against the pension reform in January 2014, demolition of buildings having historical significance in Yerevan in June 2014, extradition of a Russian servicemen who murdered an Armenian family in Gyumri in January 2015, the rise of public transport fares in June 2015, and the electricity price hike in July 2015. A distinct kind of protest in the form of an armed occupation of a police station took place in July 2016 (Vasilyan, Citation2016).
18 While Iran had been neutral vis-à-vis the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict due to its large Azeri population, as well as its marginalisation owing to the Western sanctions, after the nuclear deal reached through the Geneva process, Iran has become a more active regional player.
19 Subsequently, Brussels has reached out to the Belarusian civil society and the opposition, by supporting media programmes, backing the opening of the Office for Democratic Belarus in Brussels, sustaining the European Parliament's Delegation for relations with Belarus (Vasilyan, Citation2018) and the support to the European Humanitarian University, which moved to Vilnius after it was closed down in 2004 in Minsk.
20 This has allowed to classify Belarus’ relationship with Russia as ‘bandwagoning for profit’ (Schweller, Citation1994, p. 74; cf Vieira, Citation2016).