On Wednesday (December 15), EU leaders will try to save their ties with the five former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe. All these potential partners have been weakened by Russian intervention and regional conflicts.
The Eastern Partnership has lost one member: Belarus, which broke with the organization in June after criticizing the controversial re-election of strongman Alexander Lukashenko in EU capitals.
The remaining five partners — Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan — will send their leaders to Brussels to meet with the heads of 27 member states, the day before the full EU summit.
“The timing of this summit was well chosen because these countries are going through a complicated period,” a senior European official explained.
The date may be correct, but diplomats in Brussels are looking forward to a frustrating encounter.
On the one hand, the capitals of Western countries are keen on threats to Russia, showing a united front.
On the other hand, they know that they cannot honestly provide Eastern countries with a path to the European Union.
Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova — all occupied by Russian troops on their territories — want to join the European Union as a guarantee of peace and prosperity.
But a European minister told AFP: “There is nothing we can do.”
Each step of the long accession process requires the unanimous support of existing member states, and long-term candidates in the Western Balkans are already facing uncertain waits.
“Some member states are pushing to accept Georgia and Ukraine into the EU, but other countries say this is impossible,” the minister, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The Eastern Partnership Summit will begin on Wednesday at 4:00 pm (1500 GMT), but before that, EU and national leaders will hold side meetings on specific regional crises.
Border conflict
Charles Michel, President of the European Council and host of the summit, will sit down with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan later on Tuesday to “relieve tensions” as they have recently erupted in conflict.
At the end of 2020, a brief but fierce war between long-standing rivals killed 6,500 people, and Azerbaijan took control of more territory around the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
The border conflict broke out again last month. The European Union has tried to act as a mediator, but Russia and Turkey are also very influential in the region.
In addition, just before the main summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet French President Emmanuel Macron and the new German Chancellor Olaf Schultz.
France and Germany are working with Russia and Ukraine to monitor the so-called Minsk process to negotiate an end to Moscow’s clashes over the large-scale military seizure of the Crimea-Ukrainian border.
Western capitals are shocked by the recent build-up of Russian troops. The European Union warned Russia that if an invasion occurs, it will implement large-scale economic sanctions along with the United Kingdom and the United States.
But this week Zelensky accused Germany of preventing NATO members from sending weapons to Ukraine in self-defense under the leadership of Schultz’s predecessor Angela Merkel.
Angela Merkel “prevents the U.S. from arming Ukraine against Russia” https://t.co/zurDcn2IAj The details released by the German media seemed to confirm Ukraine’s claim that the Merkel government actually vetoed the supply of weapons by NATO allies to Kiev.
-Georgi Gotev & EURACTIV.bg (@GeorgiGotev) December 15, 2021
At the same time, Georgia is experiencing a political crisis. Moldova’s economy is being affected by rising natural gas prices, and Brussels believes that this was carefully planned by Moscow in order to demonstrate its strength in the region.
Two regions of Georgia-Abkhazia and South Ossetia-were occupied by Russian troops, as was the Moldova region along the Transnistria.
“The permanent instability in many regions of the (Eastern) Partnership is very worrying because it threatens peace within and outside the region,” the European Minister said.
Brussels recently took a rough line with President Vladimir Putin’s Moscow, expanding various sanctions regimes, and threatening a strategic economic response to aggression.
EU leaders condemned Lukashenko for directing migrants to the EU border and accused the Kremlin of manipulating natural gas prices for political purposes.
However, the minister admitted that Europe “is of little significance to Putin, and Putin only seeks to deal with Americans in terms of European structure and stability.”
Long slow road
Putin wants to maintain Russia’s influence over the former Soviet republics that now border Turkey and EU member states — and prevent them from any hope of joining the EU or NATO.
Europeans openly rejected the idea of Russia’s veto or sphere of influence, insisting that Eastern partners are free to choose their own future and strategic alliances.
But privately, several senior European diplomats and government officials admitted that no one in Brussels could envision Ukraine or Georgia joining the European Union.
“The accession process involves countries in the western Balkans, not partnerships,” said Peter Stano, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell.
For the EU, relations with Kiev, Tbilisi, and Chisinau are governed by the association agreement signed in 2014, rather than the long and slow road to EU membership followed by countries like Serbia and Montenegro .
A senior EU official explained: “We provide tailor-made partnerships for these countries. We provide more to countries that want to do more.”
Therefore, Europe will mobilize a 2.3 billion euro investment plan and receive billions of dollars in support from private and non-EU institutions to rebuild partnerships.
However, since there is no clear path to real members, frustration and disappointment are increasing. The signs are warning signs such as Zelensky’s outbreak of Merkel.
An official from a member state warned: “If Russia does not leave room for action, the EU will have to carefully adjust its actions and responses.”
