Eastern mess: The EU’s partners need attention by Ian Bond
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine signed EU association agreements in 2014, but reforms are now stalling. The EU needs to push the three governments to do more. Europe’s southern neighbourhood is in such a state of chaos, with civil war in Syria and anarchy in Libya driving migrants and refugees onto European shores, that few EU leaders are paying attention to the Eastern neighbourhood. But Europe cannot ignore the challenges and opportunities there. There are limits to what it can do with Armenia, Belarus and Azerbaijan: it should encourage improved relations with the first two; and do its best to respond to repression and corruption in the third. But its priority should be to re-energise reform processes in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, in alliance with populations desperate for better governance and an end to crony capitalism. In Armenia, progress in relations with the EU stalled in 2013 when Moscow leant on Yerevan to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union rather than signing an association agreement with the EU. Since then, however, the EU and Armenia have started negotiating a new deal, designed to preserve as much of the draft association agreement as possible. Armenia depends on Russia for its security, but the EU should help it to keep what freedom of manoeuvre it can in foreign policy and trade relations.
In Belarus, President Aleksandr Lukashenko will go through the formality of being re-elected in rigged elections on October 11th. In the past, the EU would probably have responded with another round of sanctions, but Lukashenko has been on his best behaviour, releasing all Belarus’s political prisoners; and he has played the international statesman, hosting talks on the war in Ukraine. He wants to show Russian president Vladimir Putin that Belarus has European as well as Eurasian options (see ‘The slow dance between Minsk and Brussels’ by Charles Grant, April 10th 2015). The EU should respond positively, though without illusions: Lukashenko has a long history of hedging his bets between Moscow and Brussels. Belarus is no longer ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’. Azerbaijan under President Ilham Aliyev is the unquestioned champion now, locking up journalists and human rights activists and accusing the West of using a ‘fifth column’ to destabilise the country. Azerbaijan poses a dilemma: on the one hand, it is a crucial element in Europe’s strategy of energy diversification; on the other, it is an increasingly paranoid and corrupt dictatorship. The EU is a major purchaser of Azerbaijan’s oil and gas, which ought to give