http://carnegieend

owment.org/2015/0
5/14/reform-asresilience-agendafor-easternpartnership/i8k4
Reform as
Resilience: An
Agenda for the
Eastern
Partnership

Thomas de Waal, Richard Youngs

ARTICLE MAY 14, 2015

SUMMARY
The EU needs to remold its support for fundamental political
reform in Eastern Partnership partner statesand use this as
a firmer base from which to assuage tensions with Russia.

After a year of diplomacy dominated by the Ukraine-Russia

conflict, the EUs Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Riga
on May 2122 will focus on the wider challenges of the
surrounding region. Yet most EU member states appear
reluctant to bring forward new agreements or promises to EaP
states.
Many aspects of the EUs response to Russian geopolitical
assertiveness have been strong and admirably balanced. Yet
there is a danger that EU policy is shaped primarily around
the Russia factor rather than around the underlying
challenges that come from the EaP countries themselves. This
approach risks turning the six EaP partnersArmenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraineinto
passive objects of a perceived Russia-EU geopolitical rivalry
instead of treating them like sovereign states with their own
specific identities and needs.

Thomas de Waal
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
RUSSIA AND EURASIA PROGRAM

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To rectify this danger, the EU needs to remold its support for

fundamental political reform in EaP partner statesand use
this as a firmer base from which to assuage tensions with
Russia. The Riga summit should aim to make a tangible
contribution to this process.
Minimalist Ambition

Since the current crisis erupted in 2013 with antigovernment

protests in Ukraine, EU leaders have repeatedly asserted that
the EaP needs to move into a higher gear. In practice,
however, a number of factors are holding EU member states
back from upgrading the partnership. While some member
states talk of the Riga summit representing a last chance for
the EaP, others hold positions that risk making it a nonevent.
The EaP strategy has in some ways evolved and become more
sophisticated. The more for more conceptwhich the union
has prioritized since 2011 and which promises bigger EU
carrots in return for partners stronger commitment to EU
principles and valuesis a sensible advance. This incentive
has drawn a useful distinction between those states that have
genuine affinities to the EU (Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine)
and those that do not (Azerbaijan and Belarus), with Armenia
being something of a swing voter between those two positions.

Richard Youngs
SENIOR ASSOCIATE
DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW PROGRAM

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Yet the legacy remains of the initial EaP logic that includes all
six countries in a single framework defined only by geography
and proximity to Russia. This was the impression given by the
previous EaP summit in Vilnius in 2013, and the Riga summit
should avoid equally prioritizing the notion of a single sixcountry framework simply to declare a political success story.
The EU would do better to focus on a select number of
practical reform priorities within each of the EaP statesas
these countries have taken political trajectories that are very
different from one another.
If at the Riga summit the EU were to aim for an ambitious set
of outcomes, it could quite feasibly offer visa-free travel to
Ukrainians entering its territory. The union could also
propose some kind of graduated membership deal for
Moldova and Georgia that goes beyond the current
Association Agreements, which create a framework for
political and economic cooperation without holding out any
prospect of EU accession.
However, in recent months the EUs level of ambition has
appeared increasingly uncertain, and doubts are growing that
member states will be courageous in the Latvian capital.
Governments prevailing outlook is one of inertia and
geostrategic caution.
There are a number of reasons for this restraint. Most notably,
some governments seem to be waiting to see how the conflict
between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in
eastern Ukraine evolves before significantly strengthening

their focus on other EaP states. European governments

priority is to avoid rocking the boat with Russia and upsetting
the extremely fragile calm that is scarcely holding together in
Ukraines eastern Donbas region despite a ceasefire deal in
February 2015.
The broad lesson that most member states seem to have
drawn from the turbulence of the last two years is that they
must take greater heed of likely Russian reactions to EaP
commitments. This is because of the extent to which Russia
has been able to complicate the smooth implementation of
many EaP policies, which the EU devised without considering
Moscows interests in the region. In the future, the
partnership looks set to resemble a framework of negotiated
order, within which Russia has a de facto if not a formal voice.
The dynamics of assertively extending EU rules and norms are
in retreat.
More practically, EU officials warn that the existing
Association Agreements with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova
need to be implemented gradually before other prospective
changes are brought to the table. In the cases of Armenia and
Belarus, the EU is now focused on very modest offers of
cooperation that fit around the still-evolving rules of the
Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.
There is much convincing logic in the EUs prevailing caution.
Yet there is considerable scope for heightened EU ambition
within the parameters of sensible geopolitical prudence.
Review Processes Are Not Sufficient

Beyond the question of ambition, there is also a risk that

effective responses to fast-moving conditions on the ground
become hostage to the unions elaborate and drawn-out
internal institutional procedures and timetables. The EU has
promised repeatedly to correct this often-seen shortcoming in
its foreign policy. Even the most charitable observer would be
hard-pressed to prove that it has done so.

Central to these internal procedures are the various review

processes currently under way in Brussels; these include one
on the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), of which the
EaP is the Eastern dimension, and another on the EUs
security strategy. There is a broad consensus among
diplomats and analysts that the EU needs to take stock of its
basic approach to foreign affairs, given the far-reaching
changes unfolding in its immediate neighborhood and farther
afield and, indeed, the shifts in the tenets of effective
international power. As a result, many diplomats feel that it
would be premature to forward radical new commitments in
Riga before these reviews make any headway.
Among those involved in the ENP review process, there is
general agreement that EU policies need to be more flexible
and more tailored to each partner countrys domestic
specificities. This is true, but it is not a reason for delaying
new action. It is not necessary to await completion of the
review processes to develop policies that are more
differentiated and effective, or for there to be a more nuanced
use of conditionality and more locally owned funding
priorities.
The more important consideration is this: while the various
review processes are entirely sensible and necessary, they
should not be taken to imply that a modest fine-tuning of EU
instruments suffices.
EU and member-state diplomats certainly understand the
need for flexibility, ownership, and differentiation. Yet in
practice, they approach such principles as relatively modest
design modifications. These principles should not divert the
EUs attention from the more viscerally political questions
with which the EaP should be grapplingquestions ranging
from simmering conflicts to rising illiberalism to corruption.
Such principles do not in themselves offer the secret to
unlocking a more geopolitically sensitive neighborhood policy.
The EU needs to design its differentiation much more

specifically as part of a comprehensive focus on political

reform processes. When it comes to bilateral relations
between member states and EaP countries, day-to-day politics
still frequently undermine EU officials efforts to establish
more effective, flexible conditionality.
Illiberalism and State Weakness in the Neighborhood

This need for a more comprehensive approach to the Eastern

neighborhood leads into another current concern: the EU still
lacks a fully political diagnosis of the root problems in the EaP
region.
The EU should not weigh its commitment to EaP countries
against engagement with Russia, as if these were two
counterbalancing policy options. The EUs policies since 2013
have been framed primarily in terms of how to respond
directly to Russia. But the containment-versus-engagement
debate with respect to Russia provides at best a very partial
lens on the preconditions of peace and stability. The most
important geopolitical question is not simply what and how
much the EU should offer to EaP partners, but what kind of
states these countries will become.
There is a deeper source of tension than the way the EU
frames its policy that to some extent has contributed to
Russias choice for strategic confrontation. That is the trend of
rising illiberalism.
All six EaP countries, including the three that profess to be
pro-European, suffer from serious domestic problems.
Azerbaijan has turned into an authoritarian state on the
Central Asian model and now has the worst human rights
record in Europe. Belarus and Armenia have entrenched elites
that govern with a somewhat lighter hand and allow elections,
but in the knowledge that the results are preordained and that
the economic and political power of the leadership is not
challenged.

Ukraines massive state problemsa powerful oligarchic class

and pervasive corruptionare well-known. The fact that
Ukraine is by far the largest country in the EaP also makes it
much harder for the EU and other outside actors to help Kyiv
tackle these problems.
Despite being praised as a European champion and holding
free elections, Moldova suffers from endemic state corruption
in which leading members of the political class are implicated.
Minority rights legislation and judicial independence exist
more on paper than in reality.
Georgia is probably the best performing of the six. A
precedent of clean elections seems to have taken hold. The
media and judiciary are mostly, if not fully, independent. But
law enforcement agencies still wield disproportionate power,
and the country still suffers from a culture of intolerance.
Above all, these states are unacceptably poor, and the gravity
of the problems facing them should not be underestimated.
With a GDP per capita of under $4,000 each, Georgia and
Ukraine are less than one-third as wealthy as Poland. More
than two decades after gaining independence, the EaP
partners are all still weak states, with high levels of poverty
and unemployment and associated socioeconomic problems.
High rates of emigration have resulted in a brain drain of
professionals and created large migrant populations in Russia.
A recent census in Georgia revealed that the countrys
population has declined by more than 14 percent since 2002
years associated in the minds of most outsiders with a
Georgian success story of reform and economic growth.
Reform as Resilience

These socioeconomic challenges have a geopolitical

implication. Russias ability to dominate or influence EaP
countries is in direct correlation to the state weakness caused
by such problemsproblems that have also helped strengthen
populist and extremist parties.

The EU and its member states assert repeatedly that their

most effective geostrategic policy is to support political and
economic reform in EaP partners. This is because the EU
should not and cannot seek to match Russian sources of
power on a like-for-like basis. The unions influence must be
of a different order.
However, the EU remains a long way from improving the
effectiveness of its support for fundamental reform in
countries in the EaP region. Two years into the current
Eastern crisis, it is difficult to see where the EUs support for
reform has been massively upgraded and revamped.
In Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, support for reforms has
been downgraded. In Georgia and Moldova, it continues at a
level similar to the precrisis period and has been unable to
quell the democratic pathologies that now smolder in both
countries.
In Ukraine, the EU has extended additional loans and
commenced a number of reform initiatives. Yet most
observers in Kyiv feel that the conflict in Donbas has reduced
European pressure on the government of President Petro
Poroshenko to deepen reformsand that the EUs failure to
revise its use of conditionality means much new money is
simply being poured into a black hole of political nepotism.
While a large number of conferences and articles cursorily
conclude that support for political reform in EaP partners
needs to be strengthened, their focus is primarily on the EUs
Russia strategy. There is much less focus on the detailed
tactics of how the EU needs to make this support more
meaningful and effective. Yet it is at this deeper level that
improvement is needed if the EUs reform-oriented approach
to geopolitics is to succeed.
The EU is right to keep the door open to engagement with
Russia and to take on board some of Moscows concerns. But
the union is mistaken in thinking that it needs to dilute its

support for reforms in the EaP states as part of this equation.

Supporting reform is not an anti-Russian option. Contrary to
much recent analysis, pulling back from reform support in the
EaP is not a kind of implicit prerequisite to more constructive
engagement with Russia.
Some analysts argue today that the focus on reform is
expendable because the nature of geostrategy and
international power has fundamentally changed. This
argument is overstated because reform processes can and
should be shaped as a means of strengthening EaP partners
state resilience. Better-functioning institutions could give EaP
states stronger de facto sovereignty and the confidence to
choose their own forms of strategic identitywhich in many
cases will include an element of (multivector) balance
between the EU and Russia.
A much more highly prioritized and systematic focus on
governance reform and on tackling deep-lying problems
would give the EaP project a strategic anchora much-needed
antidote to the growing sense of extempore shapelessness.
Toward a More Differentiated Partnership

For the EU, a corollary of this emphasis on state resilience is

that it requires a yet-more-differentiated EaP strategy. This
means biting the bullet of offering Georgia, Moldova, and
Ukraine the big incentive of an eventual EU membership
perspective. This could be done on some kind of innovative,
graduated basis, in full awareness that this goal cannot be
realized for perhaps fifteen or twenty years.
By the same logic, the EU should stick by its principles and
not unconditionally give any special status to Armenia,
Azerbaijan, and Belarus, each of which pursues illiberal
domestic policies at variance with EU norms. This position
should come with the proviso that normal foreign policy
discussions will continue and that the door remains open to a
more privileged relationship in the future.

Discussions should continue on a modernization pact with

Azerbaijan. Diplomacy should advance with Belarus,
especially as the sanctions the EU has imposed on the country
since 2006 have not worked. These steps are important
because some form of engagement is needed to cajole regimes
to contemplate a degree of reform over the medium term.
With Armenia, which came close to agreeing an Association
Agreement with Brussels in 2013, discussions should deepen
on how the EU can maintain a relationship with the country
since it entered the Eurasian Economic Union in January
2015and in case that Russian-led project fails. Yet all these
avenues of engagement would best be pursued outside the
framework of a privileged EaP relationship supposedly based
on commitments to shared values.
In Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine, the reverse side of offering
a membership perspective should be a more hardheaded EU
approach to the reform agenda. In particular, all engagement
should be based on the understanding that if corruption
continues at such high levels, no amount of foreign aid or
economic reform will make a difference.
EU ministers and other senior officials now routinely stress
how much they support the principle of local ownership and a
more demand-led EaP. But the imprecision with which EU
officials talk of such notions suggests they have little idea of
what they meanor where they would actually take the
Eastern Partnership over the longer term.
The EU certainly needs to support more demand-driven
initiatives that originate from EaP partners if it is to quell
growing frustration in these countries with the union. But
from an earlier tendency to follow a uniform, Eurocentric
script, the EU risks tilting to the other extreme of molding
itself in an overly ad hoc fashion to redlines drawn by regimes
with less-than-stellar democratic credentials. Giving partner
regimes whatever they want is not in itself a foreign policy.
Review processes, policy documents, the EU high
representative, and European commissioners can all breezily

allude to key principles. But if the EU raises expectations that

are then not fully met, its geostrategic interests will be
seriously weakened. Unfulfilled expectations will hasten, not
prevent, the regions incipient de-Europeanization.
Rather than putting all hope in a revamped EaP, EU member
states should use their scope for more agile and immediate
bilateral policy initiatives. Member states could easily commit
to pumping in additional funding to EaP partners by pooling
new resources to maximum effect outside the scope of slowmoving EU budgets. Despite all the official rhetoric about the
EUs unprecedented geopolitical challenge in the East,
member-state governments have reduced, not increased, their
funding levels in the EaP region. Instead of waiting for yet
another EaP policy document talking of the same generic
motherhood-and-apple-pie principles, national governments
could launch concrete and specifically funded new initiatives
now.
A final, very practical policy suggestion: independent analysts
and civil society actors in EaP states should turn the tables on
Brussels and prepare their own progress reports on the EU
to assess the unions follow-through on its stated principles.
The EU publishes progress reports every year that take EaP
partners to task for falling short of their commitments.
Organizations in the six EaP states should produce similar
progress reports that monitor the EUs success or failure in
delivering on its own promises.
This kind of reform-targeted shaming might be a much bigger
catalyst for concrete EU policy improvements than any
number of high-level summits that are long on rhetoric but
short on substancethe kind of imbalance one fears might
prevail in Riga this May.
Read more at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/14/reform-as-resilience-agenda-for-easternpartnership/i8k4