BALKANS MODEL TO UNDERPIN EU’S ‘EASTERN PARTNERSHIP’
EUobserver.com
18.09.2008 @ 09:37 CET
Belgium
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – EU policies applied to the Western Balkans
– such as a regional free trade area – are inspiring the "Eastern
Partnership" with Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan and
"hopefully" Belarus, participants at a conference organized Wednesday
(17 September) by the German Konrad Adenauer think-tank learned.
Initially a Polish-Swedish proposal endorsed in June by all member
states, the Eastern Partnership is designed to deepen ties with the
"European neighbours" to the east, balancing the ‘Mediterranean
Union’ with the southern "neighbours of Europe," as Polish MEP Jacek
Saryusz-Wolski put it.
The Georgian conflict sped up the process of drafting the eastern
policy by the European Commission, with president Jose Manuel Barroso
scheduled to sketch out the main features already at the EU summit
on 15 October.
"We might be inspired by the experience with the Western Balkans that
countries which perhaps didn’t work so well together in the past,
will do so in specific areas like energy or transport. We should put
forward the idea of creating a free trade area between these countries
– something which worked quite well in the Balkans," Gunnar Wiegand,
director for Eastern Europe, Southern Caucasus and Central Asia within
the European Commission, explained.
The new policy will consist of a bilateral dimension and a multilateral
one, the latter being "really new," in addition to existing cooperation
mechanisms, he said.
"There would be something fundamentally new if we would create some
form of regular political dialogue at the highest level between the 27
and the five, hopefully the six countries in a not too distant future,"
Mr Wiegand said, referring to Belarus as the potential sixth country.
Speeding up or initiating visa facilitation agreements was an idea
championed by the Polish and Swedish speakers, who stressed that it
is easier for South Ossetians and Abkhazians with a Russian passport
to travel to Europe than it is for someone with a Georgian passport.
But the commission official mentioned the "substantial political
resistance from some member countries" on a future visa liberalisation
agreement with Ukraine, while underlining that EU-Ukraine negotiations
on an "Association Agreement" was an important "example" to follow
for the other countries of the Eastern Partnership.
Regarding the other EU co-operation platform in the region, the Black
Sea Synergy, which includes Turkey and Russia, Mr Wiegand said that
"there will have to be a choice whether one wants to establish a
good form of this multilateral process or whether one wants to use
existing mechanisms where also other players continue to have a role."
Mr Saryusz-Wolski, the chairman of the European Parliament’s foreign
affairs committee, warned that "the problem is not what to put
in the Eastern Partnership, but how to implement the available
instruments." He stressed the need for benchmarks, individual
evaluation of each country and called for appropriate funding, the
current envelope of â~B¬2 billion for the entire EU neighbourhood
policy – which also includes the southern Mediterranean rim – being
"insufficient."
Speaking of other frozen conflicts such as Transnistria and Nagorno
Karabakh in the light of the events in South Ossetia and Abkhazia,
Mr Wolski underlined the need for the EU to "anticipate," not just to
"react," for instance by helping Ukraine’s majority-Russian region
of Crimea with better infrastructure and other "pragamatic" solutions.
Accession after 2020
With the perspective of EU membership for the partnership countries
set out in "10-15 years," the focus should be on "doing something now"
and helping the countries to establish strong institutions, rule of
law and a functioning market economy, German MEP Elmar Brok said.
Mr Brok, who used to be Mr Wolski’s predecessor as the chairman of
the foreign affairs committee, was presented as a "forefather" of the
Eastern Partnership, as he championed a similar idea three years ago,
called the "Neighbourhood Policy Plus" for the same group of countries.
"We need to have a step by step approach. Visa facilitation is
important, WTO, gradually passing from an association agreement to a
free trade area. It means to go further as far as possible in terms
of these countries adopting the aquis communautaire, rather than
focusing on the membership perspective, which is too distant," he said.
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