ECFR Predictions for 2013

2012 saw continuing crisis in the eurozone, growing Euroscepticism and populism in some corners of Europe, faltering transitions in Egypt and elsewhere, more violence in Syria, a new leadership in China, and both Putin II and Obama II. 

So what will 2013 hold? Gazing into our crystal ball, we came up with the following ideas (although it's fair to say that we were divided on many of them). 

1. The single market unravels.

As ECFR’s recent paper - “Why the euro crisis threatens the EU’s single market” - shows, however the EU and eurozone deal with the crisis this main achievement of European integration will be damaged. A full eurozone break up would shatter the single market (and Schengen) while a great leap towards integration would see shrinkage as others (like the UK) withdraw. But even “muddling through” will diminish its depth.  In the past months banks in the eurozone have withdrawn from cross-border business. Because of the spreads, even poorly-managed German companies are paying significantly less interest than well-managed Spanish companies. All of these developments create new barriers and will lead to a renewed focus on domestic markets. For Europe, this means less competition, less growth, and higher prices for consumers. Our forthcoming paper on Europe’s “New Political Geography” (based upon ECFR’s 2012 series of 14 National Papers) shows how many EU member states are deeply concerned that differentiated integration is forcing them to the periphery of the European project.

2. “Small” states lead the EU’s foreign policy.

While the biggest countries of the eurozone are focused on the crisis and the UK is increasingly disengaged from Europe, new coalitions of willing members have been leading on the EU’s foreign policy. ECFR’s “Foreign Policy Scorecard 2012” showed that Poland and Sweden were the ones taking the initiative and leading Europe on the world stage. This year’s Scorecard, due to be published later this month, shows that Sweden is taking the initiative roughly as much as traditional large powers like France and the UK, with the Netherlands and Finland also demonstrating that in EU foreign policy size isn’t the only thing that matters.

3. The end of technocracy.

After a year where technocrats took over the countries of the periphery and other leaders, electoral politics will return to European integration. In Italy the vote could turn into a referendum on Monti’s reforms, with or without the current prime minister’s participation, with substantial implications for the rest of Europe.  And the German elections could also see a new government elected that has less constraints on what it is able to do – although the danger is that Europe will be largely absent from the campaign.

4. The British debate over Europe becomes less toxic.

Although the UK Independence Party will continue to make gains and force many Conservative MPs towards more Eurosceptic positions, 2013 will see a growing realisation that the UK is sleepwalking towards a disastrous EU exit. Business leaders will lead the backlash, followed by politicians – including many Conservatives who decide that Euroscepticism divides their own party, helps UKIP, and distracts from their own challenges with economic dysfunction and a fractious coalition. The arguments over Scottish EU membership also serve to highlight the tangible benefits of membership (see Peter Kellner’s ECFR paper on how the result of a British referendum on the EU may turn on how many judge the EU in pragmatic rather than ideological terms).

5. Syria as the playground for proxy conflicts.

The ongoing civil war in Syria is the epicentre of a wider regional battle, complicating hopes of resolution and bringing in the threat of wider destabilisation. It is sharpening sectarian tensions, reinvigorating dormant Sunni jihadi forces, pushing Iran and its allies on the defensive, and providing new room for Kurdish ambitions. The febrile atmosphere in Kurdistan is opening cracks between Ankara and its de facto allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and reverberations are spreading into northern Iraq.

6. Political versus religious Islam.

With a backlash against political Islam evident in Egypt and Tunisia, it’s apparent that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are finding it hard to deal with voters’ everyday practical problems and aspirations. Islamist parties have been forced to develop a more mature political style and formulate policies on socio-economic challenges to retain the support of essentially traditional and pragmatic voters.  However this is creating a gap between political Islamists and their religious such as the Salafists who are seeking to take advantage of greater religiosity in civil society. This tension will become a defining issue for countries such as Egypt and Tunisia as they continue their political transitions.

7. Putin’s increasingly ungovernable Russia.

A sick and politically enfeebled Putin is no longer able to play different power clans off against each other, making the country increasingly ungovernable while the petro-economy slows down. This may prompt a return to defensive/aggressive posturing to its south and west (it will keep quiet over China), for instance through greater involvement in the Former Soviet Union (meddling in Ukraine and Georgia), and diplomatic muscle flexing in Syria and with the US and NATO over missile defence and the Magnitski list. However, underlying this is the realisation that Russia desperately needs the West and can’t afford to push too hard in difficult times.

8. Security in the Maghreb becomes a real issue.

While UN and African peacekeepers struggle with the crisis in Mali, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) will attempt to extend its ambitions to terrorist attacks in Europe, prompting an increase in French military strikes against AQIM.

9. China 3.0 meets Chinese leadership 1.5.

Chinese intellectuals and thinkers, think their country needs to enter a new era. After Mao’s political revolution (‘China 1.0’) and Deng Xiaoping’s economic revolution (‘China 2.0’), they are expecting a ‘China 3.0’. Now that China is becoming more affluent, how does China deal with growing inequalities, rebalance its economy and increase its exposure to the global economy? How does the Communist Party retain stability, with increasing friction within Chinese society and half a billion ‘netizens’ active on the web? But the 18th Party congress has anointed leaders who have more in common with the past than the future.  As the political system becomes more rigid, and its foreign policy more aggressive, there is a growing tension between China’s strong society and its weak political system.

And finally, the big question in European foreign policy is…

10. Will post-American Europe fail to grow up or discover strategy?

For European foreign policy the elections didn’t really matter, and now President Obama is proving it by showing that a “pivot” to Asia is a fundamental “shift” away from the North Atlantic. As the 2013 Scorecard suggests, Europe continues to find ways to fail to come to terms with foreign policy… but if Europe’s leaders finally look up from the euro crisis, notice how much the continent has lost power, prestige and influence, and accept the need to formulate a European Global Strategy it could all be so different (perhaps in 2014).

And a word about how well we did with our predictions last year:

1. A “European Clash of Civilisations” – True (and predictable) enough, in as much as the EU has been torn (between core and periphery, eurozone and non-eurozone, “virtuous” North and “profligate” South) for much of 2013. The picture is of course far more complicated, as our National Paper series shows, but we called this one right.

2. Germany discovers that it’s a European country – There are signs that the debate in Europe is now shifting, with questions of political integration now being discussed (not quite extending to eurobonds). Maybe we had better judge this one after the 2013 German elections are out of the way…

3. A British Europe without Britain – British Eurosceptics have certainly had a good year (although next year may not be so promising), and there are definite signs that aspects of the EU (for instance a greater role for national governments, liberal reforms for the periphery, loss of central institutional power) are becoming more “British.”

4. China is forced into a financial G3 to safeguard the value of its reserves – this has not held up quite so well, although as we noted, the power shift to the East needs to take into account China’s economic interdependence with the West and its need to rebalance its economy.

5. The Russian Scramble for Europe (and banks) – So far this has not happened, although the situation in Cyprus, where Russia has played an important role in helping the country deal with the financial crisis, shows that Russian investment is something that the EU should not ignore.

6. The remilitarisation of Europe – Although the crisis and international impotence over Syria has crowded out real discussion of European strategy, there is a feeling in some corners of ECFR that 2013 could be the real year where an EU-wide sharing of security concerns and capacity could be on the cards…

7. China discovers competitive politics while reinforcing authoritarianism – The Bo Xilai affair and the autumn leadership “selection” showed that authoritarianism was reinforced without much in the way of competitive politics – although (as discussed in ECFR’s “China 3.0”) there is a vibrant internal Chinese debate over other mechanisms for political representation and competition.

8. The Domesticated Brotherhood – As noted in this year’s set of “Ten Trends”, political Islam has found its first steps in government to be difficult ones, leading to something of a recent anti-Islamist backlash. This has led to a tension between political Islam and religious Islam that we think could be a big story in 2013.

9. A perfect Iranian storm – At the time of writing this has not happened, although Iran and its nuclear programme remains a toxic issue in the Middle East and beyond.

10. The Youthquake doesn’t happen – Despite the Occupy Movement, the Pirate Party and so much else, we were right: organised older folk and the impotence of treating Facebook “likes” as a real proxy for voting and participation means the “Youthquake” is yet to happen.

The Spectre of a Multipolar Europe

an ECFR report

The French seaside resort of Deauville came to prominence in the late 19th century – a time of grand hotels and swanky casinos. It was also a time when Europe was divided up between great powers who each jealously guarded their own little patch of Europe, with individual spheres of influence scratching up against each other. It is therefore a fitting location for a summit meeting involving three of the continents’ perennial great powers – Germany, Russia and France (Monday 18th October) – at a time when Europe is once again becoming a multipolar continent.

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are reaching out to Russia because they believe European security is no longer a matter for NATO or the EU alone. They are correct. The United States has signalled that it is less interested in European internal security – not least when President Obama declined to turn up for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The current order is also dysfunctional, failing to deal with wars in Kosovo and Georgia, recent instability in Kyrgyzstan or several so-called frozen conflicts dotted around the continent. The grand project of expanding EU membership eastwards has faltered of late. Even when – as we at the European Council on Foreign Relations strongly hope – Turkey and the Western Balkans become members of the EU, it is clear that NATO and the EU will never be the main security institutions in Europe, covering all European states. There is therefore a pressing need for Europeans to start rethinking their security. But while the summit has the right agenda, it has the wrong participants.

Russia needs to be at the table. It never accepted the post-Cold War order, and is now strong enough to openly challenge it. It is, however, also open to engagement, and Medvedev himself suggested working towards a new European security treaty a couple of years ago.

Another seat at the table must be given to Turkey, an emerging pole on the European continent. As the country’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, puts it, his country is an actor, not an issue. The Turkish sphere of influence ranges from Central Asia, through the Caucasus, Middle East and into the Western Balkans. European influence and interests in this contested neighbourhood, just as with the areas that Russia considers its own Near Abroad, requires either competition or engagement.

The EU must be there but many member states cavil at the idea that Paris and Berlin represent them. It would make more sense for the member states to mandate Baroness Ashton as their representative instead. This would both be a response to the Lisbon Treaty while allowing the EU to end the anomaly where the EU – one of the most important suppliers of European security – is not represented in any of the continent’s security institutions.

Rather than trying to tinker with the existing institutions, the idea would be to re-invigorate them from the bottom up. By involving Russia in the US-initiated missile defence shield, NATO can build on Obama’s ‘reset’ to cement a continent-wide security identity, focusing minds on external threats to Europe. But alongside this, the EU needs to engage its neighbours in advancing security within Europe. It needs to build trust between Europe’s powers and challenge them demonstrate resolve – by engaging Russia in solving frozen conflicts such as Transnistria, for instance, or supporting Turkish involvement in Bosnia. A regular informal trialogue could bring together the EU, Russia and Turkey to work on these issues, alongside other interested states.

The Deauville meeting, and November’s NATO summit looking at the new NATO Strategic Concept, support the feeling that the time is ripe for rethinking European security. The EU has spent much of the last decade defending a European order that no longer functions while hoping for a global multilateral order than will probably never come. ‘The spectre of a multipolar Europe’, which has just been published by the European Council on Foreign Relations, calls for a creative and mature response to a shifting environment, and the demands of Russia and Turkey to be taken seriously as credible actors. To paraphrase Lord Ismay, the goal of rethinking security should be to keep the EU united, Russia post-imperial and Turkey European.

A version of this article first appeared in Open Democracy

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Broken promises from EU members on crisis missions risk more fragile states collapsing into failed states

October 15

Broken promises and treating Afghanistan, DR Congo and Iraq like Bosnia has left the EU without the capacity to prevent fragile states from becoming failing states. This is the main finding of the latest report from the European Council on Foreign Relations, published today.

According to the report, Can the EU rebuild failing states? A review of Europe's civilian capacities, by ECFR's security experts Daniel Korski and Richard Gowan:

• EU member states break promises and significantly under-staff key international missions.
  No member state has deployed even half of what they promised in the 2004 Civilian Headline Goal process, and the EU has a shortage of 1,500 personnel across its 12 ongoing EU state building missions. All eyes are on Afghanistan: but the EU's police mission there is at half its authorised strength.
• Crisis missions still rely on the 'Bosnia-template', ignoring reality on the ground.
  The 2005-2006 mission to DR Congo, for instance, was rendered largely irrelevant because EU planning failed to take into account corruption and the country's size compared to Bosnia.
• Turf wars between the European Commission and the European Council weaken missions.
  In practice, spheres of influence overlap, leading to squabbles over who is responsible for what. In 2004 this led to a case at the European Court of Justice over who should get involved in a project tackling weapons trafficking in West Africa.

Daniel Korski says:

"If Yemen descends into full blown civil-war or al Qaeda gains new bases in Africa, the EU will be ill-equipped to offer the strategic and development assistance likely to be needed. Getting EU crisis missions right is essential in a world where stability in faraway places is key to security on the streets of Hamburg, Marseille and Manchester."

Broken promises and weakened missions

The EU prides itself on its involvement in civilian missions to fragile states, with successes in countries like Bosnia and Aceh. But this reputation is being undermined by the broken promises of some member states.

The worst offender in breaking promises is Spain, which deploys less than 3% of its pledged civilian experts. Britain does little better, fulfilling only 7% of its promises. France is more than twice as likely to stand by its undertaking, but Korski and Gowan rank France below Britain because France's civilian missions have serious flaws elsewhere - for instance, debriefing procedures in France are very inconsistent.

Korski and Gowan's report is the first-ever audit of the EU's civilian crisis management capabilities based on extensive research in all 27 member states, interviews with more than 50 EU officials and reviews of completed and ongoing European missions, including former EU Special Representatives, heads of missions and senior generals.

For the full text of the report: http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/civilian-crisis-report.pdf

Key recommendations to policy makers include:

1. The EU needs to scrap the 'Bosnia template' and rethink its entire approach to foreign interventions, with a focus on speed, security and self-sufficiency. EU member states need to recruit the right specialists, officials and administrative staff. Then the EU must be able to deploy these civilian experts rapidly to dangerous places and to let them operate closely with local populations. Civilian personnel must become better at taking the initiative, and Brussels must be prepared to cut the apron-strings.
2. The EU should appoint senior envoys in each of the twenty countries the EU considers to be at greatest risk of instability. These twenty countries should be based on the European Commission and Council Secretariat's watch lists of countries in danger of slipping into violence. This would allow the EU to have a more seamless approach to foreign interventions, taking steps to prevent crisis before they erupt and offering immediate assistance on the ground when they do.
3. Set up a "European Institute for Peace" which should be the standard setter of member states' civilian missions training.
4. Ensure each member state devises a National Action Plan, to make certain all recruitment, training, funding, debriefing and planning targets are met. This should be peer-reviewed by another member state every four years.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Daniel Korski is a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and is based in London. He is a former British official who has worked in Bosnia, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. He can be contacted at daniel.korski@ecfr.eu, or on +44 7876 616302.

2. Richard Gowan is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and is based in New York City. He can be contacted at Richard.gowan@ecfr.eu, or on +1 917 975 6629.

3. Results of the audit: The analysis of the 27 member states conducted in this audit allowed the authors to divide them into four groups on the basis of their civilian crisis management capabilities.

a) The professionals: Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The EU's top performers take the role of civilians in crisis situations seriously. They recruit carefully and comprehensively, offer extensive training for civilians, have developed cross-governmental planning processes, and seek to debrief all deployed personnel to learn lessons.

b) The strivers: Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and Romania. These countries show signs of wanting to build their civilian capacities but have yet to put in the necessary hard work. While France, Italy and Romania are all major contributors to missions in terms of numbers deployed, they fall down elsewhere. None of these countries appears to take have put much thought into recruitment, and debriefing procedures in France and Italy are extremely patchy.

c) The agnostics: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. These countries seem unconvinced about the value of civilian deployments. Planning is a problem; all countries report poor governmental co-operation; and debriefing is mostly patchy and informal.

d) The indifferents: Other than Lithuania, which seems to be attempting to improve its performance, no country in this category seems to take the task of developing civilian capacities seriously. Only Greece and Malta have compulsory training for police; Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia only train personnel deploying to Afghanistan. Planning and debrief procedures in these countries are also very weak. Others, such as Bulgaria, Luxemburg and Cyprus, need more coordination between the ministries responsible for their involvement.

4. This report, like all ECFR publications, represents the views of its authors, not the collective position of ECFR or its Council Members.

5. For all media enquiries please email press@ecfr.eu or telephone +44 20 7031 1623.

6. The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent and effective European values based foreign policy. http://www.ecfr.eu/

What Does Russia Think

The EU's Russia policy cannot succeed as long as it continues to rest on faulty analysis and mistaken assumptions. This is the main conclusion of What does Russia think?, a collection of politically revealing essays by intellectuals whose views influence the Kremlin - many of whom have advised Putin or Medvedev - which the European Council on Foreign Relations has published today. The collection includes essays by Fyodor Lukyanov, Valery Fadeev, Vyacheslav Glazychev, Gleb Pavlovsky and Leonid Polyakov.

Despite a tendency toward insularity, the policy debate in Russia as reflected through these essays is ongoing and lively. As ECFR Russia experts Ivan Krastev, Mark Leonard and Andrew Wilson write in their joint introduction: "If we want to influence and deal with Russia, we need to understand it. But if we want to understand Russia, we should be interested in it. Unfortunately, we are not. Taken together, these essays show that the EU will only be able to develop an effective approach to Moscow if its policy makers rediscover some of the curiosity for Russia's internal debates that they had during the Cold War."

According to the intellectuals:

Russia does not want to be like the EU. The overarching quest for most Russian policy-makers is not to move closer to their Western neighbours, as many in the EU would like to think, but rather to free themselves from the West. Leonid Polyakov is the Chair of General Political Sciences at Moscow State University, and has worked on developing and publicising the controversial "sovereign democracy" concept. In his essay, An Ideological Self-Portrait of the Russian Regime, Polyakov writes: "the task before us is to turn Russia from an imitator of other civilisations into a model to be imitated by others."

There is mounting distrust towards the EU in Russia. Russia fears that its borders are vulnerable, which explains the ongoing drive to surround itself with buffer states. Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, which produces the most widely read analysis of Russian foreign policy. As he writes in his essay Rethinking Security in 'Greater Europe', "not a single country in the former Soviet Union, including Russia, can say for certain that its borders are historically justified, natural and, therefore, inviolable".

The West has lost interest in discovering what is really going on in Russia, and relies on obsolete perceptions going back to the end of the Cold War. Gleb Pavlovsky is head of the Russia Institute and is one of the Kremlin's leading strategists. He helped launch Putin as Yeltsin's successor and ran Putin's two election campaigns in 2000 and 2004. In his essay, Two missions in Moscow, Pavlovsky argues that western liberals focus stubbornly on what Russia lacks: "The West persistently repeats, like a mantra, that Russia is "weak". The US refuses to recognise, and the EU refuses to accept, the reality of a global Russia. This is the biggest problem in relations between Russia and the West."

Russian political debate is far more complex than a struggle between democracy supporters and Putin followers. There is an underlying "Putin consensus" in Russia - Putin's approval rating hovers at around 70%, while support for the government he heads is not even a third of this figure. But in denouncing the "Putin consensus" as manifest authoritarianism, the West fails to appreciate its social and political origins. To understand it, one has to look back at the debilitating crisis resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the anarchic democracy that followed. Vyacheslav Glazychev is the Managing Director of the Evropa publishing house which specialises in books on Russian politics, philosophy and history. In his essay The 'Putin consensus' Explained', he argues that "fear of empty space" is the essential reason for Putin's majority support. According to Glazychev, "the Putin phenomenon has only an indirect relationship with the rational. Without a shadow of a doubt, Putin's macho style has an almost magical effect on the majority of Russian citizens."

The economic crisis has strengthened Putin's Russia. Contrary to many predictions, the economic crisis has made the Russian state more powerful at home and abroad. Valery Fadeev is the editor of the influential business weekly Ekspert. In his essay, Has the economic crisis changed the world view of the Russian political crisis, he writes that when the economic crisis hit, "the authorities acted quickly and nearly always correctly. They preserved the financial system at a high level of functionality and prevented panic from entering the banking market."

For the full text of the paper:http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/ecfr_what_does_russia_think.pdf

EU and the UN, the battle for influence

The EU's ongoing loss of influence at the UN is putting lives at risk, a new paper from the European Council on Foreign Relations argues.
As world leaders gather in New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the paper - The EU and human rights at the UN: 2009 annual review - by ECFR's UN experts Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner MEP warns that the EU is losing its ability to push the UN to respond to humanitarian crises.
Earlier this year, the EU was repeatedly thwarted in its efforts to use the UN to pressure the Sri Lankan government to allow humanitarian aid in during its assault on Tamil areas, which led to tens of thousands of civilian casualties. China and Russia blocked EU attempts to force Colombo's hand in the Security Council, and the EU found itself outmanoeuvred and outvoted in the Human Rights Council.
The paper - the authors' follow-up to their report last year on the EU's performance in human rights debates at the UN - also reveals that the number of states most fiercely opposed to the EU's human rights positions at the UN has swollen to 40 this year from 19 last year. Since the late 1990s when the EU enjoyed the support of over 70% of the UN General Assembly in human rights votes, support of the EU's human rights position has haemorrhaged: the EU has lost the backing of 13 former allies on human rights votes in the last year - 117 of the UN's 192 members now typically vote against the EU.
Gowan and Brantner argue that while the Obama administration's decision to re-engage with the UN following the obstructionism of the previous administration has generated a new spirit of optimism, European governments have failed to capitalise on this new mood and are increasingly allowing their opponents to set the agenda and dominate human rights debates and effectively endorse human rights abuses.
Richard Gowan says:
Obama's enthusiastic engagement with the UN gives Europeans a new sense of hope after Bush. But the EU must avoid the temptation to hang back and hope the US will fix everything - American diplomats want to see that the EU can deliver.
Tragically, EU and US efforts to contain the Sri Lanka crisis through the UN failed due to opposition from China, India and Russia. Up to 10,000 civilians died. The basic value of saving lives is falling victim to power politics in the Security Council.
The paper is the first of a series of annual updates mapping the EU's performance in human rights debates at the UN, based on the authors' groundbreaking Audit of European Power at the UN, which revealed a massive decline in European power at the UN over 10 years.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS:

The EU needs to use "tough diplomacy" to deal with the power politics played by China and Russia - and advocate a new Security Council agreement on protecting humanitarian access during major crises.
The EU and the US should set up a working group to co-ordinate human rights positions at the UN - and expand it to include other liberal states.
To regain the initiative at the UN, the EU should use next year's Millennium Development Goals conference to address unfinished UN reforms by tabling agenda proposals now.
The European Commission should raise economic rights issues at the UN instead of waiting for G8 and G20 meetings to improve relations with the developing world during the recession.

FOR THE FULL TEXT OF THE PAPER: http://ecfr.eu/page/m2/3560dda0/5135bcdf/32ef4984/34af2b99/3259004495/VEsD/

NOTES TO EDITORS
Richard Gowan is a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and is based in New York City. He can be contacted at Richard.gowan@ecfr.eu, or on +1 917 975 6629.
Franziska Brantner is an MEP (Green Group), where she sits on the Foreign Affairs committee. She can be contacted on matters relating to this report at franziska.brantner@gmx.de.
This memo, like all ECFR publications, represents the views of its authors, not the collective position of ECFR or its Council Members. It does not reflect the official view of the Green Group in the European Parliament, or other parties and institutions with which the authors are involved.
For all media enquiries please email press@ecfr.eu or telephone +44 20 7031 1623.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent and effective European values based foreign policy. http://ecfr.eu/page/m2/3560dda0/5135bcdf/32ef4984/34af2b9c/3259004495/VEsA/

Europe's lost battle

A complacent strategy focusing on slow change rather than pressing crises is losing the EU its battle with Russia for influence in the eastern neighbourhood, according to a new report by the European Council on Foreign Relations. The report predicts dire consequences for the six eastern neighbours of the EU - Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia - as well as for the EU itself unless EU leaders improve their act and stop placing a lazy bet on a strategy of "enlargement-lite" - ignoring that the six countries are deep in the worst political and economic crisis since their independence. This irresponsible lack of attention means Europe risks another "August surprise" with Russia, like last year's Georgian war - this time over new elections in Moldova or another gas crisis in Ukraine. Yet the EU continues to pursue a strategy of incremental, long-term reform in the region, as most recently with the "Eastern Partnership" launched in May.
The report, entitled The limits of enlargement-lite: European and Russian power in the troubled neighbourhood, is based on extensive work by researchers mapping EU and Russian power in each of the six neighbourhood countries. The authors, Andrew Wilson and Nicu Popescu, argue that the EU urgently needs to rethink its approach to eastern Europe or face a ring of failing states and an increasingly active Russia rebuilding its sphere of influence.
Wilson and Popescu say:
The EU has reached the limits of its transformative power in eastern Europe. Without the accession carrot, the countries of the eastern neighbourhood will not naturally gravitate towards the EU, as Brussels policymakers seem all too often to assume. It's time for the EU to understand that if they do not help eastern European states to deal with the crises ravaging the region, Russia will.
Distrust and fatigue increasingly cloud the EU's relationship with its eastern neighbours. With Russia's influence growing, the EU must work to save the region from turning into a quagmire of half-reformed or failing states.
While the EU dithers, Russia has drastically overhauled its foreign policy since Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 and has developed new and effective ways of using soft and hard power in the neighbourhood. All neighbourhood countries, other than Belarus, trade more with the EU than Russia. But Russia skillfully uses its smaller economic muscle to gain bigger political clout through strategic investments and realist politics. Countries can do without IKEA, but they can't do without gas.
The single biggest factor identified for tarnishing the EU's soft power and standing in the neighbourhood is the restrictive, discriminatory, and opaque nature of its visa polices. Whereas Russia provides visa-free access and encourages migration, citizens of Ukraine and Moldova can no longer visit Schengen EU without visas. The EU does nothing to act on its vague long-term promise of eventual visa-free travel. For many migrant workers from the neighbourhood, it is Russia not "fortress Europe" who provides an opportunity for a better life.

The report's findings include:

Distrust between the neighbourhood and the EU is on the rise. Polling data analysed for the first time in this report shows that the EU needs to regain hearts and minds in the region. Moldova is the only neighbourhood country in which a majority of the population clearly favours integration with the EU over Russia. In Ukraine, the linchpin state of the region where EU approval is rapidly waning, 42% of the population is now in favour of integration with Russia, as opposed to 34% with the EU.
The neighbourhood is blighted by crises. Moldova's parliament has burned, Ukraine lives in fear of a Crimea flare-up, and Russian soldiers are less than 100 kilometers away from the Georgian capital. The damage caused by the economic crisis means there is a real risk of failed economies, if not failed states, on the EU border.
The consequences of the neighbourhood's crises for the EU are profound. A prolonged contest between the EU and Russia's ambitions for a "sphere of influence" over the neighbourhood is likely to increase tensions in EU-Russia relations and lead to further conflicts. Re-ignited hostilities and economic collapse could cause an influx of migrants. Several EU member states, notably Austria and Italy, are heavily exposed to the neighbourhood's imploding economies.
For the full text of the report: http://ecfr.eu/page/-/documents/ECFR_ENP_report.pdf

Recommendations to EU policymakers:
Bureaucratic strategies like the Eastern Partnership urgently need to be complemented by dynamic, country-specific measures, to help the neighbourhood states resist short-term political and economic pressures. In Ukraine, an EU "political troubleshooter" should be tasked with resolving the political conflict that is paralysing the country. In Georgia, the EU must maintain its monitoring mission and step up efforts to resolve the crippling tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi. In Moldova, which is in danger of sliding into authoritarianism following contested elections in April, the EU should couple generous offers of aid with tough demands for reform of security agencies and an end to harassment of the media and opposition groups.
The EU must rekindle its appeal to neighbourhood states. Visa regimes for citizens of the neighbourhood countries urgently need to be liberalised. Sweden - which along with Poland was the inspiration for the Eastern Partnership - should use its EU presidency to get a high level EU troika to embark on a "listening tour" throughout the region and initiate a "27+6" foreign ministers meeting. To counter the perception that it is the motherland of bureaucracy and red tape, the EU should invest in innovative ways of supporting media freedom, such as a "new media school", and offer financial assistance for wireless internet access in Moldova and Georgia.
Without sacrificing its own interests or principles, the EU must look for ways to work with Russia to make the region more stable. This will help quell notions that the EU, by striving for influence in the Eastern neighbourhood, is essentially waging an ideological war against Russia. The EU should express its support from Medvedev's proposals for a "new European security architecture".

NOTES TO EDITORS:
Nicu Popescu is a Research Fellow at ECFR. He holds a doctorate in International Relations from the Central European University in Budapest. In 2005-2007, Nicu was a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels and was previously a visiting fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris. Nicu runs a blog on the EU's neighbourhood and Russia for the EU Observer (in English) and a foreign policy blog in Romanian. He can be reached at nicu.popescu@ecfr.eu or press@ecfr.eu, or on +44 7795 312467 .
Andrew Wilson is a Senior Policy Fellow at ECFR. Previously he was a Reader in Ukrainian Studies at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University College London and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. His most recent books include Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World. He can be reached at andrew.wilson@ecfr.eu or press@ecfr.eu, or by telephone on +44 7920 421066 .
This report, like all ECFR publications, represents the views of its authors, not the collective position of ECFR or its Council Members.
For all media enquiries please email press@ecfr.eu or telephone +44 20 7031 1623 .
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the first pan-European think-tank. Launched in October 2007, its objective is to conduct research and promote informed debate across Europe on the development of coherent and effective European values based foreign policy. http://www.ecfr.eu/
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An European perspective on Guantanamo

ECFR Press Release


The Justice and Home Affairs Council is meeting today and Friday to discuss Europe's action on resettling Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Anthony Dworkin, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of ECFR's recent policy brief, Beyond the "War on Terror": Towards a new transatlantic framework for counterterrorism, says:

"President Obama has promised to close Guantanamo, and Europe applauds him. But so far the EU has been slow to offer support. Europe has a huge interest in rebuilding a counterterrorism partnership with the US based on the rule of law, but it cannot expect to have influence in Washington if it is not prepared to help resettle Guantanamo Bay detainees.

It now seems likely that the European Union will agree a framework this week that makes a very positive start - it is the initial, necessary step towards Europe working with the US in closing Guantanamo.

The EU ought to endorse this framework. Member states must then urgently agree with the US how many and which detainees they are willing to take. As part of the deal, the US should be willing to admit some detainees itself."

Dworkin calls for:


1. The EU must endorse a joint framework for resettling detainees that includes a supporting statement that member states consider accepting some former prisoners, as well as providing an information sharing protocol - which will help allay concerns over freedom of movement in the Schengen area. Giving the stance Obama is taking and the hurdles he is facing in closing Guantanamo, such a statement will contribute to improved US-EU relations.
There are 50 detainees whom the United States is willing to release if a country can be found to take them. Since Obama became president, the UK has accepted a former resident and France has taken a non-citizen with family members in France. Several other EU countries-including Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and Belgium-have said they will consider doing so.

2. Member states must move quickly to reach agreement with the US on a specific number of prisoners they are willing to take as Obama works to follow through on his promise to accept some detainees in the US.

For press interviews and comment, Anthony Dworkin can be reached at: anthony.dworkin@ecfr.eu or on +44 7879 636701.
For all other press enquiries, please email press@ecfr.eu or call +44 (0)207 031 1623.

For more information, please click here for ECFR's latest policy brief on counterterrorism.

ECFR "China treats EU with diplomatic contempt"

European Council on Foreign Relations

April 17

China is exploiting the EU's divisions and treating the 27-state bloc with "diplomatic contempt" on issues ranging from trade to the Dalai Lama, according to a new policy report by the European Council on Foreign Relations, a leading pan-European think-tank, in close cooperation with Asia Centre at Science Po. Even though China is the EU's second largest trading partner, EU policy still has roots in a time when China was a developing country rather than a diplomatic competitor. Following the failure of the EU to put united demands to China at the G20, it is essential that the EU strikes tougher bargains with Beijing and uses the levers at its disposal- otherwise it will be outmanoeuvred at next month's EU-China summit in Prague.

This analysis comes in the Power Audit of EU-China Relations, the first ever pan-European study of EU-China relations. It is written by John Fox, ECFR Senior Policy Fellow; and Francois Godement, ECFR Senior Policy Fellow, Professor and Director of the Asia Centre at Sciences Po, based on extensive fieldwork and interviews in all twenty-seven member states.

Fox and Godement argue that a policy of "unconditional engagement", in which the EU grants China economic benefits in the hope that this will lead to democratic reform, has failed to achieve advances since it was introduced in the mid-eighties. And jostling for influence in Beijing between member states - especially France, Germany and the UK- means that they have refused to support each other on contentious issues such as meeting the Dalai Lama.

This division and outdated strategy are leading to failure across the domestic and foreign policy agenda:

Economics:

The EU's trade deficit with China has now surpassed the US's to become the largest in the world. Despite enjoying open access in European markets, Beijing has not provided equal access to European companies in China. Chinese markets continue to be protected by a maze of industrial policies, restricted access, and opaque procedures. Access to China' s property market and service sector has been limited, and the Chinese have failed to invest in European public bonds or in private capital markets.

Human Rights:

The EU's 24 formal dialogues with China on human rights have been turned by Beijing into "inconclusive talking shops". Despite twenty years of EU pressure, there is no evidence that European lobbying on human rights such as use of the death penalty and religious freedom have achieved anything.

Foreign Policy:

China has been willing to undermine European efforts to improve the behaviour of regimes in Burma and Darfur, while EU efforts to persuade China to isolate Zimbabwe have had "no impact whatsoever". Despite much-heralded European progress on getting China signed up to sanctions against Iran, they remain so weak that there is every chance they will never prevent Iran becoming a nuclear state.

John Fox and Francois Godement say:

"China has learned to exploit the divisions among EU Member States. It treats its relationship with the EU as a game of chess, with 27 opponents crowding the other side of the board and squabbling about which piece to move."

"Whenever China has shifted its position as a result of European pressure, as on Darfur or nuclear proliferation, it has reacted to a coordinated effort from the most influential member states."

The analysis of the 27 member states conducted in this Power Audit allowed the authors to characterise them on the basis of their relations with China into four groups:

Ideological free traders. Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. Mostly ready to pressure China on politics and mostly opposed to restricting its trade. Their aversion to any form of trade management means that they are unwilling to use trade as a bargaining chip when they are dealing with China's centralised and aggressive trade policy.

Accommodating mercantilists. Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Share assumption that good political relations with China will lead to commercial benefit. See anti-dumping measures as a useful tool and oppose awarding China Market Economy Status. Compensate for readiness to resort to protectionist measures by shunning confrontation with China on political questions. But they add to European divisions by refusing to bring pressure to bear on Beijing on human rights and other non-trade issues.

Assertive Industrialists. Czech Republic, Germany and Poland. Only group willing to stand up to China vigorously on both political and economic issues. Ready to pressure China with specific demands for a given sector, to support anti-dumping measures, or to threaten other trade actions. They contribute towards European divisions because some, including Germany, have doubts about an integrated EU approach and still prefer to compete with other member states for Beijing's ear.

European followers. Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg and Lithuania. Most European-spirited group and follow, rather than lead. Many do not consider a relationship with China to be central to their foreign policy. Their strategy adds to EU weakness by feeding the perception that China is not a key European priority - even as they rely on EU support to protect them from pressure on issues like Taiwan or Tibet.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• The EU should abandon its policy of "no strings attached" engagement and strike tougher bargains with Beijing. It should offer to lift its embargo on arms sales to China in return for a Chinese commitment to push for stronger sanctions against Iran. Similarly, China could be offered market economy status under WTO rules in exchange for the removal of trade barriers and improved intellectual property-right protection.
  
• EU leaders should declare publicly that they reject any restriction of their right to meet the Dalai Lama - so that individual members cannot be individually punished, as when China retaliated after President Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama by cancelling the EU-China summit in Lyon.
  
• The European Council should launch a major review of EU policy towards China. Member States should "Europeanise" their national cooperation programmes and key dialogues with China: coordination between national governments in the EU has been no effective substitute for a single, focused dialogue or programme with China.

In addition, the EU should:

• Establish a permanent "open troika" system for engaging China on priority topics. The troika-which would comprise the current and next presidencies and the Commission-should also be open to Member States that would demonstrably contribute on the issue; producing a study of a relevant topic or funding for a project could serve as entry requirements. This open troika format should extend to representation at EU-China summits.
• Press Beijing to grant EU officials increased access to Chinese government machinery - and explain that access to officials in Europe may be limited for Chinese officials if this is not forthcoming.
• Protect European intellectual property by buying partial ownership of the key technologies and patents it helps develop, so as to improve control of technology transfers to China and fend off pressure that Chinese government partners now exert on Europeans to share their knowhow.
• Offer security cooperation with African governments to protect Chinese activities and investments against security threats. This commitment should be traded for greater Chinese support for peacekeeping operations in Africa.
• Offer China a technology transfer package of key energy-efficient and renewable technologies, including EU funding and knowhow transfer. In return, China should commit to a global stabilization goal and to specific domestic targets on emissions in post-2012 negotiations.
• Facilitate Chinese investment in transport infrastructure, energy distribution and telecoms, in exchange for China opening up its infrastructure projects to foreign firms and removing ownership restrictions on Chinese firms.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. "Power Audit of EU-China Relations" was written by John Fox, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations; and Francois Godement, Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, Professor and Director of the Asia Centre at Sciences Po.

2. This report, like all ECFR publications, represents the views of its authors, not the collective position of ECFR or its Council Members.

3. Power Audit of EU-China Relations assigned scores to Member States' individual policies and actions towards China. The main policies actions scored were: position on Taiwan, position on Tibet/willingness to meet the Dalai Lama, prominence of human rights issues, willingness to raise global issues with China (Iran, Sudan etc.), voting on anti-dumping issues, position on trade deficit, attitude towards Chinese investment in Europe, and more broadly the nature of political statements on China. Member States were scored for actions that were respectively more supportive or critical of China, and to the top or bottom for actions that were more free-trade or protectionist.

4. Mr. Fox can be reached for comment at john.fox@ecfr.eu or on +44 7796 938 268. Mr. Godement can be reached for comment at francois.godement@ecfr.eu or on +33 1 75 43 63 20.

5. For all media enquiries please email press@ecfr.eu or telephone +44 20 7031 1623

6. Launched in October 2007, the European Council on Foreign Relations is a pan-European think tank and advocacy group, co-chaired by Martti Ahtisaari, Joschka Fischer and Mabel van Oranje. European Council on Foreign Relations - www.ecfr.eu

7. Founded in 2005, Asia Centre conducts research and organizes debates on international relations and strategic issues, as well as on the political and economic transformations of the Asia-Pacific, and promotes cooperation and second track dialogue with partners in Asia, Europe and elsewhere in the world. Asia Centre is based at SciencesPo., the Institute of political science of Paris www.centreasia.org

Promoting democracy abroad - the EU perspective

A joint report by the Spanish think-tank FRIDE and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), about sharing the European democratic experience in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco.