UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Thursday 16 February 2:30 – 4:00: Panel B1: Regional Economies of Inclusion and Exclusion

Anke Schmidt-Felzmann (University of Glasgow): ‘Russia’s "self-exclusion" from the EU’s neighbourhood policy and its implications for the EU’s normative agenda’

This paper will examine the European Union’s capability as a normative agent in Eastern Europe after the Cold War. It will challenge the notion of the EU as a purveyor of democratic norms and values in its Eastern neighbourhood with an analysis of the Russian case, by arguing that a) the EU has little leverage over a country that does not wish to join the Union, and b) in practice, economic/energy interests and considerations are given priority over normative concerns.

While the EU has been key to the spread of democratic values in EU accession states, especially in the former communist countries that joined the EU in May 2004, this paper will argue that the EU’s ‘normative capability’ in relations with Russia remains weak without any prospect of a strengthening of the EU’s ‘positive influence’ over developments in Russia.

The paper seeks to establish whether the emphasis that has been placed in political rhetoric on the adoption and implementation of ‘European values’ by Russia has translated into (consistent) political practice. Every meeting between representatives of the EU and Russia emphasizes the importance of ‘shared European values’ and norms as the (non-negotiable) basis for their relationship. But in bilateral meetings between individual EU member states and Russia, a discussion about norms and values rarely figures on the agenda, which indicates that the democratisation of Russia may not be as high on the EU’s political agenda as official statements make us believe.

The EU has only minimal leverage over a country like Russia and that, the paper will argue, is to do with the fact that Russia is not interested in joining the European Union, in stark contrast to other ‘EU-outsider’ countries of the ‘near abroad’, such as Ukraine and Moldova which are embraced by the European Neighbourhood Policy and which have strong ambitions to join the European Union. Most EU ‘carrots’ (like development aid) that are handed to ‘EU-outsiders’ to "persuade" them into a normative approximation, are, in reality, not made dependent upon the implementation of democratic principles, and there is little else that the EU could offer to ‘convince’ its Russian neighbour that it must implement the international norms and democratic principles that it subscribed to when it joined the Council of Europe and the OSCE in the early 1990s. Furthermore, Russia is increasingly unwilling to have the EU intervene in what it considers its internal affairs – including Russian actions in Chechnya, Ukraine or the government’s handling of the oligarchs- claiming that the EU is seeking to dictate the direction Russia’s post-Cold War transformation should take.

The paper will conclude that, at a time when recent developments in Russia indicate a return to anti-democratic governance and the violation of human rights for the benefit of (re-)building a strong authoritarian state, it is difficult to imagine that the EU may, in the foreseeable future, find enough incentives for, or exert enough pressure on Russia to enforce the adoption of the ‘Copenhagen’ values.