The EU’s clueless central Asia policy Jules Evans
May 17, 2007 | More on Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks | No comments
Last week, the Kremlin signed a deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan that apparently stymies the mooted Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which the EU was hoping would free up some Turkmen gas from the bear hug of the Kremlin. Instead, it looks like for the time being, all Turkmen gas will be exported via Gazprom.
There was a brief window of opportunity for the EU to try and woo the new president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov, after president Turkmenbashi died suddenly earlier this year.
But did the EU ever really have any hope of winning over the new president? The Kremlin would have had top politicians on the plane immediately to Ashgabat, with promises of major new investments and major personal financial incentives for all concerned. The EU would have sent some minor bureaucrat several months later, to discuss the possibility of a wide-ranging partnership including strengthening the country’s judiciary and possibly supporting some sort of theatrical festival.
The EU only got around to passing an energy security policy last year. Can you imagine? Only in 2006, after the Ukraine gas crisis, did the EU wake up to the fact that it was rather dependent on Russia for gas supplies. One assumes that the political elite of Europe is alive and awake to the issues facing it. But one assumes wrongly.
The EU commissioner for external relations, the Austrian Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who is the EU’s pointman for Russian relations, is a by-word for incompetence in Brussels. She is famous for constantly changing her mind.
A source told me about one Commission meeting where EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, put forward a trade policy on the CIS. Ferrero-Waldner expressed reservations about it. Mandelson, with icy sarcasm, slowly replied: “That’s very interesting, Benita, that you should express such a view. Because it is the exact opposite of the view you expressed two weeks earlier [waving a typescript of the view she had earlier expressed], which in turn is the exact opposite of the view you expressed a month before that [waving another typescript]…” and so on.
She is, like so many EU commissioners, out of her depth, her appointment the result of political horse-trading rather than merit.
In 2005, the EU finally got around to appointing a special envoy for central Asia. Only in 2005. The US has had a special envoy for the Caspian region for over a decade. That’s how they helped push forward the BTC pipeline, about ten years before the EU had ever even begun to formulate a policy on energy security.
But help is at hand. We now have the redoubtable Pierre Morel, special representative for central Asia, former French ambassador to the Vatican, to save us from excessive dependence on Russian gas.
Morel told the EU this month that he’d noticed there was quite a lot of competition for central Asian oil and gas. Thanks Pierre, keep us posted. He went on that Russia and China’s approach to the region was a “head of state approach” that differs from the EU’s €750 million Central Asia aid package for 2007 to 2013, which is based on wider social, trade and environmental projects designed to nurture long-term stability.
“I don’t think there’s an equivalent from Russia or China in terms of water or environmental management,” Mr Morel said, adding that EU “institutional strengthening” – it wants to remodel Central Asian judiciaries and parliaments – is the only way to bring in major, international energy investors. “Just having a head of state approach will not help,” he explained. “The Russians have not struck the right level yet.”
So sending Putin or Hu Jintao to Kazakhstan or Turkmenistan, where they have direct meetings with the presidents of these countries, is not the right approach. No, we’d do much better to send the former French ambassador to the Vatican. Show them we mean business! And then give a few hundred million to strengthen the judiciary, so that major energy investors feel safe to invest. Wait a second…major energy investors like BP or Chevron have already been in central Asia for over a decade. Well…never mind, let’s still spend hundreds of millions strengthening the judiciary. Money well spent!
So while Putin is meeting with the new president of Turkmenistan and making sure all Turkmen gas is going through Gazprom, what is Morel doing? He’s meeting with the Kazakhstan chairman of the commission of human rights in Astana, which is about as oxymoronic a job title as ever I heard, to make the solemn announcement that the EU is “deeply interested” in making contacts with Kazakhstan, and that this year, the EU is expected to work out a “large scale and complex strategy on cooperation with central Asian countries”. Well done Pierre! Another coup!
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