Why the EU Needs a Strategy for the Black Sea Region
the-eu-needs-a-strategy-for-the-black-sea-region/
1/3/2007 (Balkanalysis.com)
By Lara Scarpitta*
It is old news that geography matters in foreign policy. A dormant
EC/EU had to learn this vital lesson in 1989, when communism crumbled
behind its safe walls. Faced with the sudden prospect of bordering
poor, unpredictable and unstable neighbours, it responded by anchoring
the former soviet satellites of Central Europe with the offer of EU
membership. But now that a new enlargement has been completed,
geography matters even more. With the accession of Romania and
Bulgaria on the 1st of January, the EU’s new eastern border has moved
south, to the shore of the Black Sea. Across its waters, however, lies
one of the most unstable and conflict-prone regions of post-Soviet
Eurasia.
For centuries, the Black Sea region has been a theatre of violent
conflicts and power struggles, due primarily to its geographical
location and character as a transit route. During the Cold War, all
Black Sea states (except Turkey) were within the Soviet sphere of
influence and at the periphery of international strategic
interests. But as the Soviet Union began to break down in 1991, the
Black Sea region plunged into chaos, torn apart by several ethnic and
separatist conflicts. The end of the Cold War’s artificial stability
freed long concealed (and suppressed) historical grievances and a
number of new independent states such as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and
Azerbaijan emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Empire.
Nevertheless, most of them are still very weak democracies, facing
territorial separatism, ethnic tensions, undemocratic trends in
domestic politics, slow economic progress, environmental degradation
and endemic corruption of public officials. The long years of armed
conflicts have caused disruptionto trade and damaged
infrastructure. Due to its potential for conflict, the region has
attracted relatively little foreign investment and most such countries
are still today heavily dependent on the Russian economy.
Unemployment rates are generally very high, with almost all states
suffer from a hemorrhagic migration abroad of a consistent percentage
of the working-age population.
Today the Black Sea region is also a major source and transit area of
several security threats, from terrorism to international organised
crime as well as arms and human trafficking. It is home to four
so-called `frozen’ conflicts – Transnistria, Abkhazia,
Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia – the unresolved separatist issues
which followed the breakdown of the USSR.
Despite years of diplomacy and talks, hopes for finding a peaceful and
long-standing resolution for these conflicts remain bleak. Apart from
fuelling bilateral tensions, these `frozen’ conflicts have been a bane
for the region’s democratic and economic development, breeding
instability and corruption and favouring the proliferation of
organised crime. Uncontrolled territories in Transnistria and
Nagorno-Karabakh, for example, have become safe havens for the
activities of powerful organised criminal groups involved in people
smuggling, human trafficking as well as goods and arms
trafficking. The phenomenon of arms trafficking is widespread in the
region and much of the large weapons stockpiles abandoned by Russia in
the early 1990s have ended up on the grey and black markets. The
region is also a major source of drug production and a trafficking
route for drugs coming from Central Asia and the Middle East
(especially Afghanistan) into Europe. Large profits are also being
made from smuggling people across the region with a promise of a
better life in the West, and there is evidence that these profits are
being reinvested into drugs and arms trafficking, as well as financing
terrorist activities, as a recent Europol report highlighted.
This situation carries significant implications for EU security. A
power vacuum in the region can potentially result in a security vacuum
with consequences which are self-evident yet highly unpredictable.
Because of its sudden and new geographical proximity to the wider
Black Sea states, the EU will no longer be immune from the backlashes
of instability and conflicts in the region, but rather will be
directly exposed to a whole range of security threats, from organised
crime to drugs and arms trafficking, as well as refugee and illegal
migration pressures.
Aside from these security concerns, however, the Black Sea region
offers many positive opportunities. The most obvious is in the field
of energy. Thanks to its proximity to the oil-rich Caspian Sea and its
vast energy resources, the Black Sea region can play a major role for
the EU’s energy strategy, to secure alternatives to Russian energy
supply.
Many ambitious pipeline projects were launched in the 1990s to
guarantee dire ct access to Caspian oil via the Black Sea. These
include the U.S. East-West Energy Corridor and the EU Traceca project
(Transit Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Central Asia).
Although these failed to materialise when conflicts erupted in the
Balkans and in the South Caucasus in the 1990s, it is in the interests
of the EU that these projects be reinvigorated to ensure greater
Western access to Caspian energy resources.
Perhaps most importantly, the Black Sea region matters for its
strategic importance, owing to its proximity to the Middle East. Since
9/11, the US has played an active role in the region to safeguard its
vast security and economic interests, especially access to Caspian oil
and gas reserves. American `pipeline politics’ has gone hand in hand
with its war on terror and the U.S.
administration has been keen to support the NATO aspirations of some
BlackSea countries.
Yet is the EU ready take up these challenges with similar energy? Can
it exploit the region’s huge and lucrative potentials and prevent
theBlack Sea from becoming a permanent source of security threats?
Most likely, it will only be able to do so partially. The reasons are
multiple. First, the EU does not have a Black Sea policy, or at least
not a coherent strategy as such. It has opted instead for a patchwork
of policies and approaches: enlargement to South-eastern Europe and
Turkey, the `European Neighbourhood’ policy and a structured
cooperation with the South Caucasus states.
Indeed, therein lays part of the problem. While the EU enlargement
policy – with its strict conditionality and convergence to EU norms
and standards – has (at least so far) been relatively a success story,
other policies failed to deliver the expected results. Bilateral
cooperation with post-Soviet Eastern neighbours like Ukraine, Belarus
and Moldova, as well as with the South Caucasus states (Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan), put in place since the mid-1990s hardly
proved a recipe for stabilisation and prosperity. The over 3 billion
euros from the EU’s TACIS funds allocated in the last ten years have
failed to convince reluctant post-Soviet governments to introduce
sound democratic and market-based economic reforms. Part of the
problem is that the EU lacks sufficient leverage to push for such
reforms. This is hardly a surprise if one considers that most of these
states are still heavily under Russia’s influence. The 2006 energy
crisis in Ukraine and Moldova, as well as Russian import bans on
Moldovan and Georgian wines and water are a stark remainder of Russia’
s economic power over its neighbours.
The EU, by contrast, continues to have a limited impact on the
region. But the EU `stabilisation’ policy has also been too weak in
its incentives to push for reforms. The so-called Partnership and
Cooperation Agreements (PACs), lacked not only a prospect for
membership but also a strict conditionalityand were based primarily on
a multidimensional cooperation on economic and cultural questions and
a political dialogue on issues concerning minorities, human rights and
security in Europe.
The `European Neighbourhood’ policy, launched officially on the eve of
the 2004 `big bang’ enlargement, was aimed at addressing some of these
problems.
But judging by the results so far, the innovative offer of `everything
except institutions,’ has not been the trump card the EU was looking
for as an alternative to enlargement. The colour revolutions in
Ukraine and Georgia have not given way to the expected substantial
democratic reforms. Moldova continues to struggle to control its
separatist region of Transnistria andthere are no signs of Belarus
abandoning its totalitarian regime. Little progress has been made in
fulfilling the various Action Plans, the EU’s own financial commitment
for the region for 2007-2013 has increased but remains marginaland the
EU has continued to politely dismiss the long-term membership
aspirations of some of its pro-Western neighbours.
Paradoxically, with these differentiated approaches towards its
neighbours the EU has in fact achieved the rather unexpected results
of widening the economic, political and social gap between them. While
in Romania and Bulgaria the EU accession process has arguably ensured
the successful creation of sound democratic institutions and fast
economic growth, the EU’s easternneighbours have witnessed a halt or
reversal of their democratic process, as highlighted by the 2005
Freedom House Report, with most struggling with macroeconomic and
structural difficulties and declining standards of living.
So what should the EU do? For a start, think strategically. After the
2007 enlargement and with the accession negotiations already underway
with Turkey, the EU has already become an actor in the Black Sea
region. Developing a coherent and well articulated Black Sea policy
to protect EU economic and strategic interests has therefore become
imperative.
No doubt, anchoring the countries of the Black Sea region is not going
to be easy, not least of all because without a realistic prospect of
EU membership for most of these states, the EU lacks its most powerful
point of leverage.
On the positive side, however, the EU is now in a far better position
to develop an ambitious and realistic policy for the region than it
was some years ago. It can now draw on its expertise and the
instruments developed in the past decade, by abandoning rhetoric and
reinforcing its concrete actions.
The coming months may be crucial for the development of a coherent EU
Black Sea strategy. German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier
made it clear that Germany intends to achieve concrete results in
Black Sea Region during its presidency by examining the effectiveness
of the European Neighbourhood policy.
Still, by itself this policy is not sufficient. The stability of the
region requires political courage and long-term strategic
thinking. The EU should certainly put `some meat on the bone’ on its
neighbourhood policy, by offering to its neighbours concrete and
lucrative economic incentives in exchange for serious and tangible
commitments to democratic and market-based reforms and the protection
of human rights. But a credible EU Black Sea policy also needs to
demonstrate that the EU is serious about the resolution of all the
`frozen ‘ conflicts in the region. The support for the EU Border
Assistance Mission between Ukraine and Moldova and the appointment of
a EU Special Representative for Moldova in 2005 is a positive sign
that EU commitment heads in this direction.
However, concrete steps must be taken at regional and bilateral levels
to find durable peaceful solutions. In this respect Brussels must also
find the political courage and determination to take the initiative
diplomatically with Russia. Unfortunately, EU reactions to Russia’s
allegedly `imperialist’ policy to its near abroad have remained weak
and not much more has been done beyond expressing disappointment.
Finally the EU needs to step in with greater support and financial
invol vement to support regional cooperation efforts. So far the EU
has paid lip service to regional cooperation preferring to focus
instead on bilateral relations.
As active regional partners and new EU members, Romania and Bulgaria
are likely to play an active role in this respect.
Romanian President Traian Basescu has made it clear on several
occasions that Romania intends to promote more assertively the idea of
a strategic vision for the Black Sea region and a greater involvement
in regional dynamics.
Black Sea economic cooperation in particular can offer the EU an ideal
forum for promoting projects in the field of energy as well as non
economic areas, such as the protection of the environment, controlling
immigration and fighting arms and human trafficking. Ultimately, the
extent to which the EU will be able to secure its immediate and
distant neighbours in the Black Sea region will depend on its ability
to increase its role and impact on the region and become a pulling
factor for democratic change. A democratic and fully integrated Turkey
will be crucial in this respect.
The benefits of a coherent, realistic and forward-looking strategy
towards the Black Sea region are enormous. If the EU’s `close’ and
`distant’ neighbours can successfully complete their economic and
political transition, security threats will be weakened. Similarly,
the creation of stable democratic institutions, functioning economic
structures and vibrant civil societies will undermine the operation of
criminal groups. To achieve this long-term objective all EU
instruments and forces should be mobilised. Otherwise, the region may
well plunge once again into chaos. However, this time EU citizens
manynot be immune.
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*_Lara Scarpitta_
( graduate/scarpitta.htm) is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies
of the University of Birmingham. Before embarking on a PhD, Lara worked in
Holland, Italy and recently in Brussels where she worked as an intern in the
Cabinet of Vice President of the European Commission Franco Frattini, EU
Commissioner for Freedom, Security and Justice.