Ring of Fire: Instability & Insecurity in the EU’s Neighbourhood

“From energy security to the risk of radicalisation in our societies, the European Union has a strong and urgent interest in a stable and peaceful neighbourhood.”
Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy

Introduction

In the most recent of its series of major reports on Europe, Europe’s Neighbours: From Morocco to Moscow, Regent’s University highlighted the challenges posed by the economic, political, social and security problems in the EU’s eastern and southern neighbourhood.¹  The EU has a neighbourhood policy not out of choice but out of necessity because these problems spill over into the EU – in terms of the economic impact, the growth of jihadi terrorism, organised crime and the way in which conflict and poverty in the neighbourhood have triggered mass migration into the EU.  It is a fundamental EU interest to see stable and secure neighbours.  There is interdependence too: the EU’s neighbours are often the countries from which Member States obtain their energy supplies; they are an important market for the EU’s goods and services; and there is significant mobility of labour between the EU and some of its neighbours.

In November 2015, the EU announced the results of its review of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP).²  First adopted in 2004, the ENP aims to provide a coherent framework for the EU’s relations with the countries that border it, particularly to the East and the South.  Since 2004, there have been huge changes in the political, security and economic environment in the neighbourhood.  These changes include: the effects of the global financial crisis; the upheaval of the Arab Spring (particularly the Syrian civil war); the Russian seizure of Crimea and its interference in eastern Ukraine; as well as the mass migration to Europe triggered by some of these events.  The EU is now devising a new neighbourhood policy to reflect the profoundly changed situation since 2004.

This paper was prepared for a seminar on the European Neighbourhood held at Regent’s University in February 2016.  A short paper such as this one only has the space to cover the issues thematically and to look at how the EU might address them, rather than to examine the circumstances of each neighbouring country.  There are detailed country chapters in the Regent’s Report, which provide much useful information and analysis.  The “neighbourhood” in the context of this paper is confined to the countries to the East and the South of the EU; it does not cover the countries of the Western Balkans³ or the EFTA/EEA states.⁴

Background

Article 8(1) of the Treaty on European Union places an obligation on the EU to seek good relations with its neighbours:

The Union shall develop a special relationship with neighbouring countries, aiming to establish an area of prosperity and good neighbourliness, founded on the values of the Union and characterised by close and peaceful relations based on cooperation.⁵

Since 2004, a series of developments to the East and the South of the EU have increased instability and undermined rather than promoted economic prosperity.  The Russo-Georgian war of 2008, the Arab Spring of 2011, the Syrian civil war and the refugee problems it created have all come on top of the effects of the global financial crisis and contributed to the emergence of an arc of instability, insecurity and lack of opportunity from North Africa right round to Ukraine.

It was always unlikely that any single policy framework would withstand this tsunami of problems and the ENP was never going to be easy to conduct because it involved not just the promotion of economic opportunities by the EU but its values as well.  The diversity of the states in the EU’s neighbourhood was always a reality.  They vary in size (both in terms of geography and population), in their stages of political, economic and social development, and in their cultural and historical ties to the EU countries.  The EU’s neighbourhood is thus anything but homogenous.

The two largest neighbours of the EU are Turkey and Russia, each requires special attention and falls outside the scope of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

Turkey’s relationship with the EU is seen through the prism of its long-standing application to join the organisation.  Already in a customs union with the EU, accession negotiations finally began in 2005, albeit proceeding at a glacial pace because of bilateral disagreements, particularly over Cyprus and the reluctance of some Member States to accept Turkey as a member.  But there are many other difficulties in the EU-Turkey relationship: the clampdown on the press and the opposition of recent years, leading to accusations that Turkey was returning to its authoritarian past; the poor treatment of its Kurdish minority; the constant stream of asylum-seekers coming through Turkey to the EU; and the drift towards markedly Islamic policies.

Yet Turkey is a growing economy on the edge of the EU: employment is rising and with a population of almost 80 million represents a substantial market for EU-produced goods and services.⁶  Furthermore, Turkey has coped with 2.5 million refugees living on its territory since the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011 and has done so with relatively little international support.⁷  Its borders with Bulgaria and Greece make it an EU neighbour but its borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria mean that it is deeply involved in and influenced by developments in the Middle East.  In addition, as a member of NATO it is in alliance with the 22 EU countries who are also members of NATO.

Russia was at odds with the EU before its seizure of the Crimea in March 2014 and interference in eastern Ukraine led to a sharp deterioration in relations.  Never a candidate for EU membership, it is the largest and most powerful of the EU’s neighbours.  Russia is important to the EU for several reasons: because of its size and relative military power, including its massive nuclear arsenal; as a supplier of energy to many EU Member States (in some cases the monopoly supplier); as a trading partner; and also because it is the neighbour of many of the EU’s neighbours and has great influence in some of those countries.

Russian influence is particularly strong in many countries that were formerly part of the USSR.  This is partly because of the large expatriate Russian communities (which President Putin has vowed to protect) but also the economic ties built up during the period of the USSR, where they were all part of a single command economy, and long-standing cultural and historical ties.  In recent years it has sought to extend its economic influence in these countries through the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), to which Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia now belong.  One commentator has described the EEU as being two communities – one real, the other imagined.  The real one is the customs and trading bloc that is the EEU today and the imagined one is a geopolitical project launched by President Putin and designed to unite the former USSR states (often referred to as the “post-Soviet space”) in a powerful economic and political bloc that would stand alongside the EU, the North American Free Trade Area and the Association of South-East Asian Nations.⁸  In pushing this policy, Putin is expressing a political as well as an economic philosophy, deliberately challenging the notion of a world based on Western values, to some extent dominated by the United States; and strengthening his domestic support as the Eurasian Economic Union concept is popular in Russia.⁹

In reality the weakness of the Russian economy, although it is the tenth largest in the world behind both Brazil and Italy, makes it a less attractive economic partner than the EU for most former USSR countries.¹⁰  Four EU Member States are in the world’s top 10 largest economies and 10 are in the top 30.¹¹  Of course there are other factors at play here: there are differences of values between Russia and the EU, which also make Russia a less attractive partner, and the Soviet era may be admired by some but is resented by many more in the former USSR states.  In addition, on its eastern borders, Russia faces the challenge of a rising economic power in China; Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan already all do more trade with China than with Russia and this trend is likely to continue.¹²

The EU-Russia relationship has become dominated since 2014 by Ukraine and its relationship with both.  In that relationship can be seen many of the tensions and difficulties that have marked Russia’s relations with the other former USSR countries since 1992.  The decision in November 2014 of the then President of Ukraine to abandon plans to sign an Association Agreement between his country and the EU and to opt instead for membership of the EEU triggered the current crisis in EU-Russia relations as well as setting off a chain of events that led to his own ejection from office, the Russian seizure of Crimea and the on-going conflict in eastern Ukraine and EU sanctions against Russia.¹³  The EU’s sanctions have hurt the Russian economy at a time when it was already suffering the adverse effects of the fall in the global oil price.  The situation in Ukraine has had a poisoning effect which goes beyond Ukraine, affecting relations between Russia and other neighbours, particularly with the Baltic States and Poland.

Despite the diversity of the EU’s neighbourhood, and the importance in it of Russia and Turkey, there are issues in common between the EU’s neighbouring countries, including those two.  These include: the need and desire to trade easily with the EU because of the huge opportunities of the Single Market; significant security issues (in part because of the rise of jihadi terrorism) as well as the legacy of former (or frozen) conflicts in some cases; and the importance of energy to both producer countries (for whom it is invariably of vital economic importance), to transit countries like Ukraine, and to consumer countries (for whom it is also vital because of their dependence on energy imports).

The Neighbourhood Today

The two biggest themes in the neighbourhood today are the low level of stability and security and the need for greater economic growth and development.  These themes are closely intertwined, cannot easily be separated and both need to be addressed if a positive relationship is to be built up with these countries.

Stability & Security

Much of the area around the borders of the European Union consists of weak or emerging economies and states, some of which are in transition from authoritarian regimes to democratic ones.  Some states are so weak they appear to be imploding – Libya is one example.

The instability to the South of the EU follows the partial collapse of the old order after the Arab Spring.  No “new order” has yet emerged to replace it; several countries are in transition and many face security difficulties, partly because of the spread of jihadi philosophy but also from the de-stabilising effect of the huge amount of arms and other military equipment released by the collapse of the Gadhafi regime in Libya and the subsequent civil war there.

The huge impact of the Syrian civil war on the wider Middle East in terms of the refugee crisis (4.39 million known to the UNHCR at December 2015) as well as the growth of ISIL and their takeover of parts of Syria and northern Iraq are well-reported but other effects are perhaps less understood.¹⁴  The inter-relationship between the Kurds and ISIL in northern Iraq and the tensions between Kurds in Turkey and the Turkish Government has received less attention.  The way this aspect of the Syrian civil war has re-opened barely healed wounds within Turkey is highly alarming. Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, dispersed across a mountainous region that straddles Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.¹⁵  In addition, despite its claim to be fighting terrorists, the Assad regime has allegedly had a tacit understanding with so-called Islamic State.¹⁶

The consequences for the EU of the instability and insecurity in its southern neighbourhood can be seen in the migration crisis, as a million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015.¹⁷  Many of these were economic migrants from countries outside the Middle East, reflecting the problems of countries further to the south, particularly in Africa.

Poor governance and poor economic performance in Africa has created a band of fragile states just south of those that border the Mediterranean.  These countries, which include Chad, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, suffer from a toxic mixture of internal conflict, poor governance, poverty and economic failure, which leads many to flee these countries and seek entry into the EU.  Several are also transit countries for migrants seeking to move to Europe – Niger is particularly important in this respect.¹⁸

To the East of the EU, the instability and insecurity is primarily related to tensions with Russia, particularly over Ukraine, which are described above.  There are other issues too, notably the series of frozen conflicts in the former USSR, such as the current division of Moldova (with part of the country – Transnistria – ruled by a pro-Russian regime), and the occupation of parts of Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia) by Russian surrogate regimes.  These unresolved disputes generate additional tension, block economic and political development in the countries affected and further divide the EU from Russia.  In many cases there is no political process to resolve the conflicts and often a lack of political will to do so.

Economic Growth & Development

There are varied levels of economic growth in the neighbourhood; there are some very poor countries, such as Moldova, that are a long way behind the EU average.  Although it is in Europe, Moldova is well behind many African economies, whether measured by nominal GDP or GDP per capita.¹⁹  Others, such as Egypt, Israel and Turkey, are more prosperous but throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) economies are affected by the exceptionally high number of young people in the population and the lack of jobs for them.  Almost 30 per cent of the MENA population is aged between 15 and 29; in the Arab countries the figure is far higher, with 60 per cent of their populations under 25.²⁰  Large numbers of these young people are without work, with long transitions from university to work in some countries too.²¹  This high unemployment rate has contributed to the migration pressures on Europe as young people understandably seek better opportunities outside their own country.  It has also contributed to jihadism.

The single most important economic activity for the EU in the neighbourhood is energy production.  The EU is the largest energy importer in the world, and much of its supply comes from neighbours and near neighbours.  Russia has been a particularly important energy supplier, providing the largest share of the EU’s crude oil, natural gas and coal imports.²²  Until recently six EU Member States were entirely dependent on Russia for their gas supply.²³  But other neighbours and near neighbours are major suppliers too: Algeria, Libya and Qatar were in the top five sources of natural gas in 2013 for the EU; and Algeria, Kazakhstan, Libya and Saudi Arabia were in the top seven supplier countries of petroleum products to the EU.²⁴

This level of dependence for the EU often amounts to interdependence – the exporting countries in the neighbourhood are highly dependent on energy exports to the EU (and other European countries) for their income.  The Russian energy company Gazprom provides about eight per cent of the country’s GDP, so the 86 per cent fall in Gazprom profits in 2014 hit Russia hard.²⁵  A complicating factor however, is that several of the EU’s neighbours are themselves dependent on other neighbours for their energy supplies; this is a factor in the disputes between Ukraine and Russia because of the former’s dependence on the latter for its natural gas supply.

EU Neighbourhood Policy

The EU has sought to implement its Treaty obligation through a structured approach in which countries have (mostly) been treated as being in one of three groups:

• the Eastern Partnership (countries to the East of the EU including Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine and the three states in the Caucasus – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia);
• the Union for the Mediterranean (for countries to the South of the EU); and
• the European Economic Area (several non-EU countries in Europe such as Iceland and Norway).

In addition, several of the EU’s neighbours are applicant states currently negotiating their accession to the EU (Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey) with other states in the Western Balkans that seek EU membership (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia).²⁶

The ENP adopted in 2004 set out how the EU would interact with its neighbours.  This strategy was backed up by a considerable budget and periodic reviews of the policy.  The main streams of work were:

• promotion of trade and economic development, including negotiating free trade agreements;
• support for better governance, the rule of law and human rights;
• visa liberalisation and other measures to improve mobility;
• infrastructure investment to improve links between the neighbourhood and the EU;
• stronger political ties, partly through a structured programme of meetings between senior figures in the EU and the neighbouring countries; and
• involving neighbouring countries in the foreign policy work of the EU, for example, by encouraging them to support EU Common Foreign & Security Policy positions.

The scale of the EU’s ENP activity is considerable.  One listing of ENP-related official activity in the EU, taking just one month as an example, identified around 80 events and statements in November 2015 alone.²⁷  This reflects the size of the neighbourhood, its range of problems and its diversity.  But some would say it also reflects a scatter-gun approach by the EU deriving from its 2004 Neighbourhood Policy, which tried to do too much and on too small a scale to make a difference.

The EU has earmarked €15.4 billion as its financial contribution to the 16 neighbourhood countries it identifies as partners for the period 2014-20.²⁸  These countries have access to funds under a range of programmes within the various streams of work listed above.²⁹

The EU’s security contribution to the neighbourhood is organised separately through the European Security & Defence Policy and has been on a smaller scale than the ENP.  It has largely been limited to fixed-period missions designed to address particular security challenges.  That is not to say that the interventions have not necessarily been effective in themselves.  Those in Bosnia, Georgia and Mali, for example, all contributed to stabilising dangerous situations in neighbouring or near neighbouring states where conflict threatened to spread more widely.  But there has been a more general difficulty in the EU of getting Member States to agree to large-scale interventions (e.g. Libya) with the result that Member States have either worked bilaterally or through other fora (such as the UN or NATO) in order to achieve their objectives.

It certainly is the case that a number of criticisms of the ENP have force, namely that:

• the original policy took too little account of the differences between the neighbouring countries – its ambition of exporting a single EU model of society has not succeeded;³⁰
• part of the reason for this was that not all the European neighbours aspire to join the EU but that aspiration was seen as an unspoken part of the ENP;
• offering deep and comprehensive free trade agreements was too complex for countries who could not meet the standards and who objected to the political elements in the agreements;
• a tangle of overlapping policy frameworks, the Eastern Partnership, the Union for the Mediterranean, that over-complicated the ENP and failed to reflect differing levels of engagement by Member States in neighbourhood policy;
• some neighbouring countries felt the EU’s approach was patronising towards them;
• other states (e.g. China, Iran, the Gulf states) provide funds with conditionality but not the value requirements the EU imposes;³¹
• requirements to adhere to EU values ran up against authoritarian regimes in some neighbours;
• the policy was not appropriate for relations with Russia; and
• in the Eastern Partnership, the EU failed at first to recognise the extent to which Russia felt the post-Soviet space was “its” sphere of influence and the EU should keep out of it.³²

This list of criticisms reflects the two biggest failings of the ENP so far in practice: it too easily assumed that many of the EU’s neighbours would want to join the EU as soon as they could; and as a result the EU was in a powerful position to assert itself in its relationship with these countries.  For lots of countries to the South of the EU, who are not in Europe, joining the EU was never an option so the EU needed to recognise that its leverage was more limited than with the countries to the East.  Secondly, the EU believed that it could export its values to a diverse range of countries, some with no history of democracy, little of the rule of law and no particular desire (at least amongst their political elites) to embrace such things unless forced to do so.  When popular demands for democracy did affect many Arab countries in 2011, the EU did not appear particularly enthusiastic about it, having long worked with the previous authoritarian regimes.

Some have claimed that the handling of the Eastern Partnership in 2013 contributed to the destabilisation of Ukraine.  Critics argue that the EU failed to take into account how Russia would feel about Ukraine and Georgia aspiring to join the EU (and NATO), prompting the “strategic surprise” of Russia’s seizure of Crimea after the Ukrainian people rejected their President’s decision to turn from the EU to the Eurasian Economic Union.

Critics of the ENP do not always recognise the difficulties of establishing a common policy inside the EU because of differences of view between the Member States.  For example, relations with Russia are an area of dispute, with Cyprus, Greece and Italy often taking a different position to the UK, France and Germany.  On Ukraine, those differences have (so far) been overcome but on other major issues, such as Colonel Gadhafi’s attempts to hold onto power in Libya in 2011, no common approach could be adopted.  The EU cannot act if Member States do not have the political will to do so.

Future EU Policy

The 2015/16 ENP review led to a White Paper in November 2015 setting out a new approach to neighbourhood policy, one less based around structures and more around the particular needs of individual neighbouring countries.³³  If adopted, the new ENP will:

• focus more around each country – no one size fits all approach;
• emphasise stabilising the neighbourhood;
• promote economic development to reduce poverty and improve economic integration;
• introduce cross-cutting partnerships across the neighbourhood on themes like energy;
• where relevant, offer simpler free trade agreements, rather than the larger and more complex ones currently on offer;
• have greater Member State involvement; and
• focus more on tackling irregular migration, including people trafficking.

This approach, which is a marked shift from the 2004 policy, places less emphasis on the promotion of trade and more on security, in response to developments over the last 10 years.  Overall, the new ENP approach might be summed up as being less idealistic and more realistic: “The ENP is no longer about transforming the neighbourhood. It’s about stabilising it”, as the European Council on Foreign Relations put it.³⁴  This emphasis on realpolitik (as one commentator called it) is a reflection of the reality on the ground.

Critics argue that the new ENP:

• downplays the importance of the values and human rights elements of the previous strategy;³⁵
• could mean more “transactional” relationships between the EU and its neighbours;
• does not offer anything new to those countries who aspire to EU membership (Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) or those who want a far closer relationship (Morocco and Tunisia);³⁶ and
• does not sufficiently address the “neighbours of neighbour’s” problem i.e. countries like Moldova and Ukraine also being influenced by their non-EU neighbours (e.g. Russia).

Despite these criticisms, the new ENP is a positive step because it displays greater realism.  Question marks remain over the EU’s ability to match the level of its response to the scale of the challenges.  Disunity inside the EU has hampered the ENP in the past and those divisions need to be overcome to make it more effective.  It is not surprising that not all Member States are interested in all ENP countries but that must not be an obstacle to common action.

The recent tensions between Turkey and EU over the migration crisis and Turkey’s willingness to slow or stop the flow of migrants through its territory to the EU indicates the way in which the balance of power is shifting in favour of some of the neighbours and away from the EU.  The era of the EU being able to dictate terms in its neighbourhood – if it ever truly could – is over.  Membership is still an attractive proposition for some countries but it is not for all.

Recognising the scale of the challenges in the neighbourhood, the EU needs to work harder to ensure that all the tools it has at its disposal are fully utilised.  The shift from talking about free trade to the issues of most concern to an individual country is a welcome one.  Trade relations will remain of great importance (and should not be neglected) but for many neighbours security is the greater concern in the medium term.  The EU needs to work far harder in the field of defence co-operation – few of its force goals of a decade ago have been reached.  The interaction between the ENP and the EU’s security strategy, currently being redrafted for discussion in the summer of 2016, needs to fully recognised.

There are other examples of where EU policies not directly related to the ENP are in fact highly relevant.  For example, the Digital Single Market and other steps to strengthen the Single Market are very relevant because the stronger the EU’s economy, the greater its leverage in its neighbourhood and globally.  Establishing an energy union is also highly relevant, not least because it could reduce the dependence of EU Member States on energy imports from unstable neighbouring countries and reduce Russia’s bargaining power, which could provide benefits for neighbouring countries too.

There are plenty of obstacles ahead.  But the EU needs to try and turn these to its advantage.  For example, establishing a constructive relationship with the Eurasian Economic Union might, in the longer term, provide the EU with an opportunity to interact more positively with Armenia and Belarus, as well as Russia.

The 2015 migration crisis and the November Paris attacks have changed things in the EU.  That can be seen in policy terms with the greater emphasis on security and shifts in national attitudes towards asylum policy.  But it can also been seen in the boost these events have given – at least in the short term – to populist movements.  This is a time of great uncertainty and there are those inside as well as outside the EU who will exploit that.  It will be critical to the success of the ENP that Member States are fully engaged with it, own its key elements and seek to explain them to their electorates, for there could easily be as much change in the next decade in the EU’s neighbourhood as there was in the last.