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31.10.07
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Still Holding Back
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By Dmitry Babich
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Another Russia-EU Summit without much Progress
The brief Russia-EU summit in the ancient Portuguese town of Mafra was labeled “the dullest and the emptiest summit in the 21st century” by Sergei Sokolov, an adviser to Sergei Karaganov, the chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy.
Surprisingly, this unusually harsh assessment was echoed by most of the Russian media, which said that the summit’s most important event was President Vladimir Putin’s promise not to change the Russian constitution to limit the powers of the country’s future president. Putin recently hinted at his willingness to become Russia’s prime minister after the presidential elections in March 2008, when he is expected to step down from his current position and Kremlin-watchers have since been debating the likelihood of plans to change the constitution, limiting the powers of the president and increasing the powers of the largely dependent prime minister. Speaking at the Russia-EU summit, Putin stressed that he was attending this event for the last time in his current job.
Some of the diplomats, however, urged the media not to stress the summit’s “frosty” character, pointing to several of the summit’s achievements, including signing an agreement on Russia’s steel exports to the EU countries and some progress in energy and investment dialogues.
“I think the media overdramatized the difficulties in Russia-EU relations,” Vladimir Chizhov said addressing the conference on Russia-EU energy relations organized by Russia Profile and Center for European Reform in Brussels on October 30. “The general amount of trade between Russia and the EU increased by 5 times since the year 2000.”
However, as far as overcoming the well publicized controversies between the two partners, there was indeed not much progress. Negotiations on the new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Russia remain stalled due to a battle of wills between Russia and Poland. Poland continues to use its veto in the European Council to halt negotiations until Russia lifts its sanitary ban on Polish meat imports. Russia voiced “concern about the absence of progress in negotiations on the new PCA” and the summit’s participants agreed to extend the 10-year-old PCA for another year.
“There was no real need for this move, since the old PCA is automatically extended for another year unless one of the sides objects. The point of no return was passed on June 1, 2007,” Sokolov wrote in his comment for RIA Novosti new agency’s website.
Russia-EU relations continue to be plagued by several unresolved issues. The EU complains about overflight fees for the use of Siberian airspace. Russia complains about the hurdles its companies face when they try to buy assets on European territory. Russia expressed particular dissatisfaction at the new “European energy initiative,” which requires strict separation of producing and distributing companies in the EU’s energy sector and introduced several measures designed to protect the EU’s energy market. This new policy may create new problems for Gazprom, which is involved in both supplying natural gas to Europe and in delivering this gas to individual consumers.
“We informed out colleagues that in case this [new energy initiative] is realized, new negative factors may appear in relations between Russia and the EU,” said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, Putin’s special representative on relations with the EU.
The situation is made worse by the fact that Russia has failed to sign not only the PCA, but also the Energy Charter, a document facilitating access to the pipelines of Charter members. So far, Russia has maintained that signing the Energy Charter could further reduce its energy independence. Meanwhile, the EU’s new energy initiative allows an exception from the new requirements – but only to countries having a “special agreement” with the EU.
At the summit, Yastrzhembsky hinted at the possibility of “progress” in the stalemate with Poland, which could free up negotiations on the PCA. In Poland, the ruling PiS party came second in recent elections, losing to a center-right party Civic Platform. Anticipating emergence of a new ruling coalition in Poland, Yastrzhembsky expressed hope that the new government could allow Russian sanitary inspectors into Poland’s meat plants, thus removing the reasons for the Russian embargo.
However, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Pawel Kowal denied knowledge of any such plans in a conversation on Saturday. |
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