Abstract
The Communication of the European Commission on the review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) has re-confirmed conditionality and differentiation as the two guiding principles for the EU's assistance to its Eastern neighbours. While this is the right step in principle, in reality this approach only succeeds insofar as the countries themselves want to embark on a path of reform and transformation. However, most of the EU's Eastern neighbours currently lack the will to do so. The lack of a promise of membership by the EU is partly to blame, but the region's own political, economic and social development needs to be taken stronger into consideration.
Beyond myths: making it real
The ENP faces several challenges. The first is its own ‘schizophrenia’: in the South, the ENP was based on how these countries are, whereas in the East, on how the EU wants these countries to be [1]. In the South, the EU accepted the brutality of the Egyptian and Libyan regimes and the corruption of Ben Ali's clique in exchange for what was perceived as stability. In the East, the EU has been trying to use its soft power more actively, but is loath to offer its key feature, the promise of EU membership. The EU has also ignored the role Russia played—sorry, paid—in bolstering the local autocrats.
Second, while the EU has expanded contacts with most of its neighbours, its policy in the East remains mired in dozens of stereotypes and myths. Despite the fact that the EEAS and EU Member States have huge presence in the EU's neighbourhood: the EU still seems to lack credible information from the ground to understand the developments in the region. Thus, the ENP often reflects the EU's wishful thinking rather than the real needs of both the EU and the region. The closer the EU is to its neighbours, the less it seems to understand them.
Perhaps paradoxically, the EU is invoking the principle of conditionality at a time when its soft power and magnetism in the East has weakened. This is due to several reasons; the lack of an EU membership promise for its neighbours is often seen as chiefly responsible. But the opposition of many EU Member States to further expansion eastwards is inspired by a myth that continues to guide the EU's policy, namely, that these countries really want to join the EU. This is no longer the case, except for Moldova or Georgia.
The rest of the region has no ambitions to join the EU club as of yet. Instead, the political elite in Belarus and Ukraine seek to pocket both the financial and the political benefits of playing off the East against the West. The partnership that Minsk and Kyiv have with Russia or the EU is what we call in our recent book on Slovak foreign policy [2] a ‘partnership à la East’: they primarily seek a modus operandi with Moscow and Brussels that would allow them to extract benefits without delivering on their part of the commitment. The EU should recall the lesson from the 2009 Ukraine–Russia gas war: those who are interested in your money are not your partners.
The EU needs to recognise how little influence the ENP has had in the Eastern neighbourhood so far. Without the promise of future EU membership, the EU's soft power in the region is based on the image the EU has, not on the policy Brussels promotes. While the EU is attractive for its living standards, its political image is that of complicated policies, multiple and often overlapping structures and unclear decision-making. In addition, the euro crisis is hardly another boost for the EU's soft power in the region.
Recalibrating assistance: a new partnership with the middle class
If the EU aspires to make a change in its neighbourhood, it needs to modify the way it provides assistance. Currently, policymakers from both the EU and the Eastern neighbourhood have little say over where the assistance is provided and to whom, and the means the ENP has at its disposal are overregulated.
Transformation of the EU's neighbourhood is a long-term project with few instant successes: it will take years, if not decades, for the region to modernise and reform. The amount of funds for Eastern neighbours is unlikely to rise substantially, although the EU's assistance to China, India or Russia—countries still described as developing countries despite their impressive economic development and own assistance programmes to third countries—could be shifted towards the Eastern neighbours. However, the problem is not in the amount of money; what matters more is how these funds are spent and what objectives they are meant to achieve.
As mentioned above, few of the EU's neighbours are currently ready or willing to embrace the EU's model of governance, democracy and economy in practice; that is, to go beyond rhetoric and carry out the necessary—and sweeping—reforms. Adopting the EU model of governance and democratic institutions is seen by many local political leaders as an obstacle to their own, often unchecked power. But the lack of understanding and, thus, a lack of popular demand for greater political or economic integration with the EU plays a huge role too: there is little domestic pressure on local governments to undertake steps that would bring the country closer to the EU. In short, the EU often lacks local partners who could advance its agenda in the region. As a result, the ENP has become an à la carte menu for the EU's neighbours: too often, the EU has supported projects that have little relevance to its own priorities in the neighbourhood.
The EU needs to complement the ‘more for more’ principle with policies and assistance designed to win allies among the local population and expand and strengthen the home-grown, pro-reform and pro-European constituencies in the neighbourhood. Relying solely on the region's governments and hoping that they will deliver on EU's demands will not work. This does not automatically mean greater support for NGOs only: for instance in Belarus, one of the EU's biggest weaknesses is the lack of contacts with local bureaucrats. Direct budget support has its importance, but that must be conditioned and monitored. Some of the innovations envisaged for the upgraded Eastern Partnership (EaP) programme, such as the inclusion of local business communities as key stakeholders and implementers of EaP projects, will additionally reflect this approach.
Modernisation has recently become a popular slogan in the East. But it is an ambition to make the state more efficient—in order to (re-)assert control over society. A (post-) Soviet mindset rules. The EU should therefore promote a progressive modernisation of society (in terms of values and political and economic freedoms), rather than just the economic upgrade.
To do so, the EU needs to look for a new partner in the region. It is the middle class that most often acts as the main carrier of modernisation. But the middle class that is gradually emerging in Eastern Europe currently lacks both the representation and the institutional capacity to initiate and sustain a shift towards a more democratic system. Thus, besides supporting pro-democracy activists and independent media, the EU should help empower local public interest groups that are embedded in the broader society, that have clear constituencies and articulated interests. These can engage in advocacy vis-à-vis the government on specific policy issues, thus promoting social rather than regime change (for which there is little popular support in the East). This means greater EU support for representative associations of businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises, but also bureaucrats, professional associations and grass-roots civil society organisations.
Whilst expanding its outreach, the EU should also prioritise those of its offers that can bring tangible benefits to society and thereby win more friends in the region (such as conclusion of the negotiations on a common aviation area, easier travel etc.). These areas require more political attention and more resources on the EU's side, including mobilisation of respective branches of the EU Commission, such as the Directorate General for Trade (to speed up the process), as well as better communication of these actions to the East European societies. While the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) are among the EU's top priorities in Eastern Europe, the DG Trade devotes little attention to the region, as economic benefits for the EU from the DCFTA with all the region but Ukraine are miniscule [3]. EU must mobilise its ‘sectoral arms’ such as DG Trade or DG Energy to improve the negotiations and make the final outcome beneficial for both sides. However, the DCFTA should not be the ultimate goal; easier and more intensive trade is, as well as investment in pro-growth strategies. The EU should also place emphasis on the implementation and enforcement of the commitments the Eastern partners sign. Assistance to sectors without sufficient progress should be suspended or withdrawn, as the EU recently did in Ukraine.
Meeting policy demands: improving implementation
The countries in the Eastern neighbourhood are weak states from the viewpoint of capacity to carry out all the reforms and adopt all the standards the EU requires. Civil servants lack understanding of how the EU works, how it seeks win–win solutions and compromises; zero-sum politics often dominate the neighbourhood. Although the EU sponsors Comprehensive Institution Building facility and other twinning programmes, most of them are underfunded and mainly cover EU experts’ stays in the region rather than for civil servants of partner countries to visit the EU. The EU should complement these programmes by devising a strategic initiative, an ‘Eastern Partnership Advancement Centre’ to train and build capacity of the civil service, journalists, civic and political activists, researchers and so on—they could enhance the understanding of the EU and thus bolster the pro-EU constituencies in the region.
This requires an overhaul of the EU's assistance programmes: Brussels should, finally, embrace a programme-based approach which allows for mid- and long-term planning, and support those European NGOs that can develop long-term partnerships in target countries. There is too much overlap between different projects implemented by different donors, while some sectors remain relatively neglected. Coordination of all aid is hardly possible; but EU Member States could consider forming voluntary coalitions in different countries in the region, based on their preferences and capacities. In coordination with the EU Commission, these ‘clusters of donors’ could prioritise some sectors over others in their assistance programmes, generating more synergies, pooling funds and, in the end, delivering better impact.
Conclusion
To make the ENP work in its Eastern neighbourhood, the EU will have to do more than rely on the principle of conditionality: it will have to address the myths it holds about its neighbourhood, narrow its focus and clarify what the ENP can realistically achieve, while improving the policy's implementation and bringing levels of assistance closer to the actual policy.
The Arab revolutions have laid bare many weaknesses of the ENP but they have also given the strongest ever feedback and reality-check for the EU's neighbourhood policy. The newly established EEAS needs to end the ENP's ‘schizophrenic’ implementation, that is, dealing differently with the South and East. Moreover, in the East the implementation of the ENP is undermined by the EU's reliance on myths and stereotypes rather than real information and well-grounded analysis. Contrary to the conventional view, the EU is not ‘losing’ its neighbourhood; it is actually making (slow) progress, even in the East. But this is mainly the result of the attractiveness of EU's living standards rather than of the EU's policies. If the EU wants to avoid future disappointments, it should go beyond the blind belief in authoritarian modernisation and reach out to new partners in the region, especially the emerging middle class.
Bold changes are also needed in how the EU plans and delivers its assistance to meet the demands of its own policy. Recalibrating its assistance in a way that allows for greater and more long-term support to domestic agents of change and pro-reform constituencies is the best investment the EU can currently make in the region. This is a clear benchmark for the EEAS's future performance. Otherwise, the European Neighbourhood Policy will remain a poorly implemented good idea.