by Georgi Kamov

For the European Union, these are turbulent times not only because of global issues such as the financial crisis or internal problems such as the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty. It is enough to look at the media headlines from the past several months in order to get the picture of an unstable and problem-ridden Eastern neighbourhood from Zagreb to Astana.

Some of its highlights include a conventional war between Russia and Georgia, gas conflict and political instability in Ukraine, violent protests in Moldova and Georgia, territorial tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, stalemate in the accession hopes of the Western Balkan countries and Turkey, uncertainty over the security system in Europe and Russia’s role in it, fierce competition for energy resources in Central Asia.

 How does the EU respond to all of these events, happening right next to its borders? In general, the Union works on three levels in order to deal with its prospective members, neighbours or partners to the East. The first one is through the big and comprehensive policies of enlargement, the newly initiated Eastern Partnership for the Eastern ENP countries, the strategic partnership with Russia and the strategy for Central Asia. These are long-term frameworks of cooperation, using similar instruments but providing quite different final results in terms of moving the countries closer to the EU.

 The second level involves small and short-term steps such as the creation of monitoring and/or fact finding missions to deal with particular circumstances, such as the ones in Georgia and Ukraine. In parallel, the EU has a number of ESDP missions with specific tasks and several Special Representatives with broad mandates related to the region or the country concerned.

 The actions of individual Member States or a group of them represents the third level of involvement. These actions could lead to different results – from the initiation of whole new policies, such as the Eastern Partnership in the case of Sweden and Poland, to conflict-mediation efforts such as the actions of France in the aftermath of the August war in Georgia.

 With so many instruments at its disposal, it might seem that the EU is perfectly equipped to influence events and processes originating from its broad Eastern neighbourhood. However, this multi-level approach was not enough to prevent instability and conflict. Neither the long-term policies nor the short-term actions proved effective enough, and quite often the blame falls on the inability of the EU to speak in one voice or act as a single, coherent entity. Or, in other words – that the EU lacks a common strategy.

Such an opinion might be valid to some extent, but fails to acknowledge that the decision-making process in the EU institutions involves arduous exercises of coordination, bargaining, package deals and compromises. Therefore, it is quite hard to steer all Member States and institutions in one direction and to expect clear-cut and concrete results, especially concerning actions related to more than one policy. If we take the enlargement process – EU`s biggest “carrot” – there are difficulties even when it comes to the most advanced countries such as Croatia.

 Yet the European Union might not need a common strategy for the broad Eastern neighbourhood. What is needed is a common approach towards it – an approach, based on connecting EU`s policies and the three levels of EU involvement mentioned above. This idea goes along the same lines as a recent paper by the Centre for European Policy Studies, arguing “whether and how the EU might, in its policies towards Russia, the Eastern partner countries and Central Asia, build stronger common programmes and projects across these three political ‘spaces’”¹.

 The geography is a bit different, but the argument is the same – it is not enough to have a number of comprehensive, separate policies targeted towards different countries and regions. What the EU needs to do is to establish linkages between these policies in order to deal with issues that do not respect the geographical span of the enlargement area, the Eastern Partnership zone or the relations with Russia. The recent gas crisis between Russia in Ukraine is one of the most recent examples exposing the lack of mechanisms for dialogue and cooperation out of the main EU policies. Sometimes it is indeed useful to enlarge the context in order to resolve a certain issue – in this case, to sit together with Russia and Ukraine on one table and not to discuss with them separately.

 This is what initiatives such as the Black Sea Synergy or the Northern Dimension are supposed to do – deal with issues such as environment, transport, energy and soft security that require joint efforts from countries belonging to different EU policies. If such initiatives are coupled with concrete and visible projects that provide short-term impact and efforts to strengthen the coordination between the Member States, the EU might be in a much better position to address the challenges originating from the Eastern neighbourhood.

1. Emerson, Michael et. al. Synergies vs. Spheres of Influence in the Pan-European Space. Centre for European Policy Studies, April 2009, http://shop.ceps.be/downfree.php?item_id=1831 .