But it’s not as if the EU handles its neighbourhood very adroitly

First appeared on Europe's World

Autumn 2009
by Fabrizio Tassinari

At the start of his country’s EU presidency, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt remarked that: “Our credibility in the wider world depends on how successful we are in our own part of the world.” Nick Witney explains in his perceptive yet provocative article why this is so. He draws our attention to the ‘return of geography’ as a basis for assessing Europe’s threat perceptions. From energy dependency to immigration, many of the most daunting challenges that are shaping the EU’s security agenda are to be found in the arc of countries around its eastern and southern borders.

Witney’s main point concerns Europe’s relations with the Islamic world, and its position in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A higher EU profile is sorely needed. In the candid report that the UN’s Middle East envoy Alvaro de Soto submitted upon his resignation, for example, he mentions the EU only a few times. And when he does, it is to say that, “Europeans have spent more money in boycotting the [Palestinian Authority] than they did when they were supporting it”. He also says that the EU’s border-monitoring mission between Gaza and Egypt has been “fraught with difficulties” and that “somewhat comically” the Middle East Quartet is made up of six parties since the EU is represented by three principals. All these flaws have once again become painfully apparent in the aftermath of the most recent Gaza conflict.

But Witney’s analysis is perhaps too dismissive when he addresses Russia and eastern Europe. It is true that Russia – whether measured in economic terms or by its rusting military capabilities –, may not in the long run live up to the “strategic partner” status it has obtained from Brussels. And there are good reasons for hoping that the EU will eventually prove to be the more attractive lodestone for the former-Soviet republics on its borders. Yet the cacophony of voices shooting to be heard in the Russia debate remains a textbook case of Europe’s under-performing foreign policy. Meanwhile, the Eastern Partnership doesn’t constitute a panacea for Ukraine or Moldova, and despite their severe shortcomings the political leaderships in those countries have not even welcomed it. Put another way, for now the EU is very far from applying Witney’s recipe of “forbearance and firmness.”

The broader point, of course, is that Europe cannot choose its neighbours, but must nevertheless decide what it wants to do with them. Throughout the second half of this decade, the EU’s enlargement policy has been mired in inward-looking squabbles, and the “light” enlargement version proposed through the European Neighbourhood Policy hasn’t quite taken off. Until recently, all this could be justified as an element of Europe’s ‘constructive ambiguity’, and indeed its successful “Bing-Bang” enlargement in 2004 made the phrase look apposite enough. But the regrettable truth is that there is not much that is constructive in the EU’s ambiguous policy mix towards its neighbours.

The EU’s ability to deal with its neighbours is not only a litmus test for its global aspirations. The neighbours in effect hold up a mirror to the EU’s own identity and influence. Sadly, the image it reflects is not very pretty.