US secretary of state Hillary Clinton will attend the Eastern partnership (EaP) summit between the European Union and its partners Hungarian Foreign State secretary Zsolt Nemeth confirmed in Brussels on Tuesday.
The summit which will be held in Budapest is a follow on to the opening summit that was held in Prague last year during the Czech Presidency and should be an opportunity to access to progress made over the past year. The partnership a Swedish-Polish initiative is generally viewed as priority for Central European states such as Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary but fails to capture the imagination of the Old Member States of the European Union (EU). With the non attendance of President Sarkozy of France, Gordon Brown of England, Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain and Silvio Berlusconi of Italy at the Prague summit last year the lack of coherency within European foreign policy decision making was there for all to see.
While the stated intention of the (EaP) is to strengthen ties with the bloc’s 6 Eastern neighbors Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the South Caucasus three, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia the big drawback of the programme is that it does not mention the prospect of European membership to these countries. Thus unlike the situation back in the 1990s and early 2000s when the states of Central Europe made dramatic changes domestically in order to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria necessary for EU accession the Caucasus countries lack the same incentive to modify domestically. Without the carrot of EU membership, what is often referred to as the ‘’ transformative’’ power of the EU (the ability to incentivize states to adapt European norms and values such as democracy, rule of law and human rights) applies to a much lesser extent.
Common neighborhood or Near Abroad?
The elephant is the room when it comes to the EaP and the upcoming Budapest summit will of course be Russia. While the EU see’s the territory covered by the EaP as a ‘common neighborhood’ between Europe and Russia, the Russia interpretation of events is much different. For Russian elites the 6 countries are more their backyard or ‘near abroad’ where it has special privileged interests. The Russia foreign Minister at the time referred to the scheme as ‘ completely unacceptable’ and accessed the EU of trying to ‘ extend its sphere of influence’.
However since then the West’s relations with Russia have improved. Last week both countries agreed to co-operate on missile defense co-operation while relations with the traditionally hostile Poland are enjoying a thaw. Nemeth said he would also welcome if the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov also attended the summit.
Cillian O’’Donoghue can be reached at codonoghue@praguepost.com
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