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Black Sea Synergy: Strategies for Europe's New Frontier

Dr. Fabrizio Tassinari, Contributing Scholar for the Southeast Europe Project; Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen; and Associate Fellow for the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS)in Brussels

Date & Time

Thursday
Jun. 28, 2007
10:30am – 12:00pm ET

Overview

Forum co-sponsored by the Southeast Europe Project, the Kennan Institute, and the East European Studies Program

June 28, 2007
Dr. Fabrizio Tassinari, Contributing Scholar for the Southeast Europe Project; Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen; and Associate Fellow for the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels.

With the incorporation of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union in January of this year, the Black Sea region has become of immediate and direct policy-interest to the EU. The region is crucial to Europe principally because of its location at the juncture of Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East and the transit of oil and gas. Challenges facing the region include serious environmental problems, legal and illicit movements of people and goods, and insufficient border patrol problems. The poor levels of economic and political governance in the region, as well as the slow pace of reforms in many of the littoral countries, are both a cause and an effect of this predicament. Lastly, one of the more challenging strategic issues that the US and EU seek to face together is how to address a re-assertive Russian role in the area, evident in Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent comment that Russia is 'returning to this region.' This begs the question of what the Euro-Atlantic response to Russia will be.

Dr. Fabrizio Tassinari covered the topics of the EU's interest in the Black Sea, what the block's objectives are, what strategies the block will use to achieve these objectives, and what impact the new EU Black Sea Synergy initiative will have on a shared trans-Atlantic vision of the Black Sea as an area of power projection.

Dr. Tassinari initiated the discussion by speaking about the recent EU Brussels Summit in June, where European leaders reached an agreement on a 'Reform Treaty' that will substitute the now defunct Constitutional Treaty. The main foreign-policy decision connected to this agreement concerns the creation of an EU 'foreign minister' figure, with the title of High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, who in essence is one person speaking on behalf of EU member states in foreign policy matters and with a seat in the European Commission. Another foreign-policy decision taken at the Summit was to enhance the European Neighborhood Policy (the so-called ENP plus) so that the EU would have more leverage on its neighboring countries. Within the ENP plus is the new Black Sea Synergy. It is called Synergy—rather than strategy—because the EU already has different strategies with individual countries in the region. The use of this term indicates that the EU will try to pull together different inputs, lessons and bilateral initiatives within this new regional framework rather than create a whole new policy.

The Context
Dr. Tassinari posits that the most obvious reason for initiating a regional policy in the Black Sea is enlargement of the EU. Only six months ago the EU became a Black Sea power with its inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania and it has become increasingly apparent that the EU is not going to enlarge further for some time. In this respect, Dr. Tassinari touched on the subject of Turkey's EU bid and the impact that the election of French President Nicolas Sarkozy—openly opposed to Turkey's EU membership—might have on this process. He argued that, notwithstanding the Turkish conundrum, the EU cannot continue using enlargement as its only successful foreign policy.

This dilemma forced the EU to devise another policy for the neighbors of the enlarged Europe. Initially called Wider Europe Initiative, the policy attempted to embrace neighbors from Morocco to Russia, but Russia eventually refused to be a part of it. Today, the EU's Neighborhood Policy engages all neighbors around Europe from Ukraine to the Caucasus, from the Middle East to North Africa. Dr. Tassinari underlined the ambiguity of this policy. The ENP seems to offer its neighbors an unclear status that is "more than a partnership and less than a membership." These countries are not promised the prospect of becoming EU members, but rather are offered an unspecified stake in the internal EU market. This concept has had major implications for countries such as Ukraine which aspire to join the EU. The EU acknowledges their aspirations but does not offer them a membership prospect for the time being. The most notable improvements contained in the ENP plus package approved in the Brussels Summit, he argued, consist of visa-facilitation agreements and of "deep free trade agreements," in which non-EU member states align themselves to the economic acquis communautaire —EU rule book—in exchange for a partial inclusion in the EU internal market.

Another limit of the EU's new Neighborhood Policy is that it puts together an extremely heterogeneous group of countries and offers them all roughly the same deal. While some countries, as noted, have EU membership aspirations, others, such as North African countries, have no interest in membership. It is not clear to either group what they should expect from this policy besides some type of enhanced form of partnership. Due to this, the regional constellations within the Neighborhood Policy become crucial in determining to what extent the EU can succeed in grouping countries with similar backgrounds and expectations and how this regrouping can succeed in encouraging their transition.

The other obvious stumbling block is Europe's very awkward partnership with Russia. The EU and Russia speak of their relations as a 'strategic partnership', which is a misnomer; it is not really strategic nor is it a partnership. Russia quite clearly does not seem to take EU institutions very seriously and prefers to discuss matters with individual member states, giving it the leverage to divide and rule. It is against this background that the EU and Russia are negotiating a 'Strategic Partnership Treaty.' These negotiations, that will encompass many sectors and a very cumbersome ratification process, will engage Russia and the EU for the next 4-5 years at least. The final treaty must be ratified by all EU members, which may result in a very drawn-out process due to the stance of individual states' relationship with Russia which may stall the ratification process.

The last reason as to why the EU decided to move into the Black Sea region is because of a number of homegrown regional initiatives, the most important being the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) initiative. The operational impact of the BSEC has been limited due to its arrangement as a forum for dialogue and because of the competition among the members of the organization. The BSEC, which remains a product of a joint Greek-Turkish initiative, has caused other countries around the Black Sea to launch parallel initiatives in the region. Among the most important of these parallel initiatives is the Community of Democratic Choice (CDC), which was launched by Ukraine and Georgia, and the revamped GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova). These groupings aim to spread democracy and freedom from the Black to Baltic Sea regions but have not been successful due to their lack of resources and political will. The problem with these parallel initiatives is that countries involved in them often overlap and promote several organizations in the same regional area.

This puzzle shows that the region has a number of crucial challenges, at the strategic and institutional level, that will affect what the countries in the region want to do and how they want to do it.

Models of Euro-regionalism
The EU is not new to launching regional initiatives in its neighborhood and in order to appreciate the way in which it did this Black Sea synergy, it is important to look at the three different models of EU regional initiatives. This will show the way the EU has effectively attempted to merge these three different models into one. The first EU regional initiative is the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership with the Mediterranean countries in the south. The Barcelona Process, as the partnership is also known, has had an enormous advantage of sponsoring dialogue and confidence around the region. The EU has been successful in promoting social and cultural initiatives to link the northern and southern regions of the Mediterranean and has tried to provide a holistic approach to regional security interdependence. However, these strengths have also been a liability, as they hampered the role of the EU on the political and security side. The policy has been ineffective because the geographical area it works in is heterogeneous and substantial political consensus has been rarely forthcoming. This regional context is in some respects comparable to the one in the Black Sea region, with a huge, heterogeneous area where some bilateral relations remain tense and others are 'frozen' by ongoing conflicts.

The second model which has been more successful than the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is the Stability Pact for South-East Europe. The success of the Stability Pact is due to its ability to coordinate international actors and donors in the Western Balkans. It has had the advantage of sending a very strong signal to the region and to Europe that it cares about the Balkans and that it was going to pull together all of its resources and efforts to make it succeed. The liabilities of the Stability Pact can again be transposed to the Black Sea region. Liabilities with countries like Croatia and Slovenia, which Dr. Tassinari termed "the quick ones," became evident as they have been provided with a speedier prospect to enter the EU and consequently have had little interest in joining a separate regional cooperation with other countries of the Former Yugoslavia. The second liability is that the Stability Pact was imposed from above with the managerial work done in Brussels and not in the region which results in a lack of ownership. The challenge here is therefore to get the countries to agree on a common set of priorities without the support of the international community.

The third model is the Northern Dimension Initiative. This model is important for two reasons. The first reason is that the initiative is the result of a bottom-up process. There has been a plethora of regional initiatives in the Baltic Sea area before the EU got involved. Therefore, when the EU launched the Northern Dimension it could complement what was already going on there. The other major asset of this initiative is that it includes Russia. This perhaps constitutes the only reason for keeping the Northern Dimension alive since the other members are now members of the EU and NATO. Nevertheless, this has given a forum for certain regional actors in northwest Russia to participate at the regional level with counterparts in the Nordic and Baltic States. This initiative's liabilities include the loss of its strategic purpose in the post-2004 enlargement environment with only a small amount of added value.

The Black Sea Synergy
Against this background, what can be said about what the EU has actually done with the Black Sea Synergy? Three aspects should be distinguished to appreciate the EU thinking with regards to its Black Sea regional initiative: prioritization, variable geometrics, and synergy. Prioritization is apparent in the EU Commission's choice as to sectors and issues to be tackled in the Synergy. These sectors include, inter alia, energy, environment, transportation, internal security and democratic institutions. Dr. Tassinari discussed the environmental sector in depth due to its success, explaining that this is the one sector in which cooperation has worked in a fairly coordinated and effective manner already. In this sense, environmental cooperation can be regarded as a model rather than a priority. He then focused on the energy sector as a top priority sector as well, stating that the Black Sea provides for opportunities with regards to energy diversification from Russia-controlled routes—a paramount EU goal. He warned that these opportunities should not be overstated, given Russia's assertive stance on energy producing, transit and consuming countries, and given the low levels of supply and demand foreseen for the alternative energy routes supported by the EU—most notably the much-publicized Nabucco pipeline project. He then stipulated that in the other two priority sectors, internal security and democratic institutions, the political will of the countries in the Black Sea region is crucial and little can be done from Brussels without their wholehearted support.

The second pillar of the Black Sea initiative is variable geometrics. The EU has realized that the Black Sea is not a homogenous region and therefore it must tackle the various sectors in each country in different ways. For example, the transport and energy sectors will need to include countries outside of the Black Sea region, such as countries in the Balkans and in the Caspian Sea region. The same applies to democracy promotion, where the role and support of new Central European EU and NATO members is crucial. The EU has been thinking about these 'variable geometries' of cooperation to address the region and it has the institutions that can carry this forward.

The last pillar of the Black Sea initiative is synergy. He argued that there are six qualities that the EU has been focusing on when it comes to the overall shape and prospect of this initiative. The first quality is pragmatism. The EU should not have a long list of nominal priorities but should rather be focused on a very limited number of projects that can be implemented. The second quality is coordination. The EU should put together a number of sectoral partnerships, where international actors and donors already operating in the region pull resources together and implement common projects. This is where the environmental sector has been successful and the EU should try to replicate it in other sectors where feasible. The third quality is ownership. Ownership means that the EU needs to support credible initiatives emerging from the region, such as BSEC, but also needs to encourage these organizations to narrow down the core business of their activities. The fourth quality is flexibility, where the regional scope of EU initiatives will change depending on the challenges and issues at stake. The fifth quality is consistency: the Black Sea synergy should support broader dynamics, particularly EU enlargement and the Neighborhood Policy, but it should not constitute a strategy per se, nor an institutional alternative for the countries concerned. The final quality is visibility. This regional cooperation initiative should send a strong signal about the importance and expectations that Europe attaches to the Black Sea and to the countries within it.

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