Messenger.ge, Georgia

Friday, September 15, 2006, #175 (1195)

Georgia needs European reforms more than European integration

Georgia’s dream of EU integration is no secret, the EU flag is even
emblazoned on the ruling National Movement’s logo, and the first step
along this long and winding road-hopes the government-is the European
Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and its attendant action plan. The
negotiations are over and the plan is due to be signed off at a
ceremony during the visit of the EU’s Neighbourhood Commissioner
Benita Ferrero-Waldner. The action plan has a five year term, during
which major and lasting reforms are expected of Georgia. With
characteristic bravado, the government has promised to complete these
reforms in three years rather than five.

The ENP sets out a bilateral relationship which offers deeper
integration with countries bordering the EU. However, the policy
"does not have an enlargement perspective", in the EU’s words, and is
results based, meaning that any further economic and political
integration is wholly contingent on the neighbour country achieving
the reforms prescribed, and the neighbour countries still have no
guarantee of an invitation to join the EU. Also, the South Caucasus
was not even considered to be part of Europe’s neighbourhood until
2004, when the three countries were hastily tacked on to the scheme.

Head of the delegation of the European Commission to Georgia and
Armenia, Torben Holtze, praises Georgia’s institutional and economic
reforms, macro-economic development and customs and tax
reform. However, Georgia came in for criticism over the supremacy of
the rule of law, the freedom of the media and the fact that more than
fifty percent of Georgians live in poverty.

The EU also upbraided Georgia on its huge military spending, something
Ferrero-Waldner recently panned Georgia and Azerbaijan for. The EC
delegation recommend Georgia spend some of those vast sums on
education, reports the newspaper Rezonansi.

Under the ENP action plan, over the next five years (or three years if
you’re as optimistic as the government) Georgia is expected to
entrench the supremacy of the rule of law, improve the business
climate, decrease poverty, cooperate with the EU in security matters
and seek peaceful resolution of the Abkhazian and South Ossetian
conflicts. Even in ten years Georgia will have its work cut out.

In an interview earlier this year the EU’s top Caucasus expert Dov
Lynch, who is convinced of Georgia’s importance for Europe, commented
that, in spite of Georgia’s repeated assertions that they are a
European country and their eagerness to accede to all the structures
and bodies associated with that status, Georgia is less successful at
implementing the necessary reforms suggested by the EU than
neighbouring Armenia. There is some irony in this, as there are no EU
flags flying on public buildings in Yerevan, and Armenia is a close
ally of Russia.

The government, which is still characterised by a high degree of
revolutionary fervour, must make sure that the rule of law is indeed
supreme, and not something that can be put aside for temporary
benefit, if they are to fulfil the action plan, and move a little
closer to Europe.

The Rose Revolution alerted a complacent EU to the reality of the
South Caucasus as a region, hence the three countries hasty inclusion
on in the ENP. For the EU it is vitally important to have a stable,
predictable and prosperous region on its south-eastern flank, a region
which borders three EU candidate countries, Turkey, Romania and
Bulgaria, as well as the Middle East. For Europe to achieve this it
needs the South Caucasus countries to be representative, stable and
predictable as only democratic states can be. It needs property to be
protected and international norms and rules to be observed. Above all,
the EU wants peace in the region, and the end to the quasi-states,
that funnel people, drugs guns and possibly worse to Europe. This is
why the South Caucasus is included in the ENP, but Europe may find its
desires more difficult to achieve here than it is used to.

Because the ENP "does not have an enlargement perspective" the
incentives for the governments of the region to adopt reforms which
may curtail there own powers are not so apparent. Although it is clear
that having open societies and rule of law based states is in the
interest of all three countries of the South Caucasus, it may not be
in the interests of their rulers. Unlike in Eastern Europe, and now in
Turkey, where the EU could say ‘if you want to be in our club you have
to follow our rules’, with the ENP there is no invitation to join the
club. Hopefully the Georgian government will realise that the reforms
themselves matter more than the integration they may or may not bring.