the european unionâs normative power in central asia ||

The European Union’s Normative Power in Central AsiaPromoting Values and Defending InterestsGeorgiy VoloshinISBN: 9781137443946DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946Palgrave Macmillan

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0001

The European Union’s Normative Power in Central Asia

10.1057/9781137443946 - The European Union’s Normative Power in Central Asia, Georgiy Voloshin

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0001

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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0001

The European Union’s Normative Power in Central Asia: Promoting Values and Defending Interests

Georgiy VoloshinPolitical Analyst, France


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© Georgiy Voloshin 2014All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.First published by 2014 PALGRAVE MACMILLANPalgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.ISBN: 978–1–137–44395–3 EPUBISBN: 978–1–137–44394–6 PDFISBN: 978–1–137–44393–9 HardbackThis book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.www.palgrave.com/pivotdoi: 10.1057/9781137443946


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http://www.palgrave.com/pivot

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0001 v

Contents

Acknowledgements vii

List of Abbreviations viii

About the Author x

Introduction 1

1 A Time to Gather Stones Together: The EU’s Normative Engagement with Central Asia in 1991–2007 161 Democracy and human rights or why

the end of history has never happened 182 Technical assistance: a life boat amid

troubled waters 233 Reaching beyond the borders: trade

and economic co-operation 28

2 The EU’S 2007 Strategy for Central Asia: Promoting Values and Defending Interests 421 Democracy and human rights: back

to the basics? 442 Energy and pipelines, or when

geopolitics becomes a trump card 503 Security and stability: reconciling

values with interests 55


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vi

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Contents

Conclusion 68

Annexes 77

Bibliography 82

Index 92


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0002 vii

Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Laure Delcour, Dr. Alexis Vahlas and Palgrave Macmillan for their valu-able comments and suggestions regarding the analytical structure of this monograph. My gratitude also goes to all those highly qualified individuals whom I had the genuine pleasure to meet across Central Asia in order to collect their first-hand impressions and feedback about the European Union’s policies there.


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0003viii

List of Abbreviations

ABD Asian Development BankBOMCA Border Management Programme in Central

AsiaCADAP Central Asia Drug Action ProgrammeCAREN Central Asia Research and Education

NetworkCBRN chemical, biological, radiological and

nuclearCIS Commonwealth of Independent StatesCNPC China National Petroleum CorporationCPE Civilian Power EuropeCSTO Collective Security Treaty OrganisationDCFT deep and comprehensive free trade

agreementDCI Development Co-operation InstrumentEBRD European Bank for Reconstruction and

DevelopmentECFR European Council on Foreign RelationsEEAS European External Action ServiceEEC European Economic CommunityEEU Eurasian Economic UnionEIDHR European Instrument for Democracy and

Human RightsENP European Neighbourhood PolicyENPI European Neighbourhood and Partnership

InstrumentErasmus European Community Action Scheme for

the Mobility of University StudentsEU European Union


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ix

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List of Abbreviations

EUCAM European Union-Central Asia Monitoring ProjectGDP gross domestic productHRD human rights dialogueIfS Instrument for StabilityINOGATE Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to EuropeISAF International Security Assistance ForceMEP Member of the European ParliamentMoU memorandum of understandingMPE Market Power EuropeNATO North Atlantic Treaty OrganisationNGO nongovernmental organisationNPE Normative Power EuropeNSLA Non-state Actors and Local Authorities in DevelopmentOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

DevelopmentOSCE Organisation for Security and Co-operation in EuropePCA partnership and co-operation agreementPEEREA Protocol on Energy Efficiency and Related Environmental

AspectsSCO Shanghai Co-operation OrganisationTACIS Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of

Independent StatesTEMPUS Trans-European Mobility Scheme for University StudiesTRACECA Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-AsiaUN United NationsUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUSSR Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsWTO World Trade Organisation


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0004x

About the Author

Georgiy Voloshin is a widely published international affairs analyst with particular expertise in the post-Soviet space. His first book on the geopolitics of Central Asia, entitled Le Nouveau Grand Jeu en Asie centrale: Enjeux et stratégies géopolitiques, was published in Paris in 2012.

Voloshin’s analytical articles have appeared in authorita-tive journals and magazines such as The National Interest, Global Asia, Global Brief, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, The Yale Journal of International Affairs, the Jamestown Foundation’s Eurasia Daily Monitor and The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst.

He previously worked at the EU Delegation to Kazakhstan and has been a political risk consultant to many publicly and privately owned organisations, including the French Foreign Ministry, the Bertelsmann Foundation, IHS, Inc. and Oxford Analytica.


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0005 1

Introduction

Abstract: The introduction introduces the concept of normative power and other related concepts and traces the brief history of the EU’s normative discourse. It highlights the growing relevance of Central Asia for EU foreign policy and offers theoretical tools to analyse the EU’s normative engagement with the region. Further analysis is based on the three-rule principle that states that for rules and norms to be effective, they must be both adopted and applied. The introduction provides a short description of Normative Power Europe (NPE) theory and details the general structure of the monograph.

Keywords: application; Manners; Nye; normative power; three-rule principle

Voloshin, Georgiy. The European Union’s Normative Power in Central Asia: Promoting Values and Defending Interests. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. doi: 10.1057/9781137443946.0005.


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On 12 October 2012, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced its decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. In a press release published on that occasion, it justified this choice with the following words: ‘The Union and its forerunners have for over six decades contrib-uted to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’.1 While it acknowledged a difficult period in Europe’s caused by an unprecedented economic crisis, the Committee still hailed ‘the EU’s most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights’.2

Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee also highlighted the role the EU had played in pacifying the continent in the aftermath of World War II.3 Two months later, on 10 December, the chairmen of three key EU institutions – the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament – travelled to Oslo to collect the prize. Ironically, the award ceremony took place in Norway, a country that had earlier voted twice against accession to the EU during the referendums of 1972 and 1994.

In his welcome address, Thorbjørn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, reminded the guests in attendance of numerous obstacles that European nations had had to overcome collec-tively on their path towards post-war peace and reconciliation. According to Jagland, the EU membership has become over time ‘a means, enabling the transition to democracy to be made as painlessly as possible’.4

When the European Council’s president, Herman Van Rompuy, took the floor, he referred emotionally to what he called the European Union’s ‘secret weapon’, a metaphor for a delicate art of binding interests so tightly that war becomes ‘materially impossible’.5

The head of the EU’s executive, José Manuel Barroso, used in his turn the famous Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza’s characterisation of peace as ‘virtue’. He then stressed once more the historical significance of the Union’s political project, which ‘embodies, as a community of values, [a] vision of freedom and justice’.6 In Barroso’s words, the cosmopolitan order promoted by the EU within its own borders represents ‘a powerful inspiration for many around the world’.7

A country’s ability to promote universal norms and values, such as democracy, freedom, justice and human rights, as well as peace and prosperity, has long been associated in the academic discourse with the concept of soft power. This type of power is commonly understood as the ability to achieve one’s goals without force, through diplomacy or


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3Introduction

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persuasion. It further refers to the use of economic and cultural influ-ence in international relations, as opposed to military power. Attracting others, thanks to a vibrant culture, robust well-functioning institutions or a successful business model is what constitutes by most contemporary accounts the basis of soft power in world affairs.

In his seminal study of soft power, Joseph S. Nye, a Harvard University professor who is unanimously considered as the pioneer of this subject, characterised what he calls the ‘second face of power’ as a country’s abil-ity to ‘obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other coun-tries ... want to follow it’.8 While the EU is deprived of the overwhelming majority of a sovereign state’s traditional attributes,9 its representation as a benevolent actor — capable of influencing others’ strategic preferences and behaviour without force or a threat of force — is not uncommon at both academic and policy levels.

The scholarly study of soft power has been promoted by Nye since the early 1990s, with the term being originally used with regard to the United States’ post-Cold War economic and cultural leadership. However, its first students were actually Europeans. Back in 1973, François Duchêne, a London-born adviser to one of the EU’s founding fathers, Jean Monnet, famously exhorted the European Community to diffuse ‘civilian and democratic standards’ around the world, lest it should become itself ‘the victim of power politics’.10 Duchêne would later garner scholarly recognition for his concept of Civilian Power Europe (CPE), which, as Jan Orbie explains, ‘challenged the “realist” or “Gaullist” notion of a Europe puissance’.11 Forty years later, Ian Manners developed a new conceptual framework known as Normative Power Europe (NPE).

Unlike Duchêne, Manners argues that the EU should be understood not as a civilian power based upon intergovernmental co-operation but as ‘a normative power of an ideational nature characterised by common principles’12 For Manners, ‘the EU is not what it does or what it says, but what it is’.13 Under this logic, NPE is endowed with several fundamental qualities: first, it ‘can be conceptualised as a changer of norms in the inter-national system’; second, it ‘acts to change norms’; and third, it ‘should act to extend its norms’.14

As much as Nye worried about the decline of American soft power during the George W. Bush presidency, Manners has warned repeatedly against the militarisation of the EU, which some policymakers see as a shortcut to increased international clout. ‘Militarising the EU’, he says,


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‘does not implicitly increase its power in interstate politics and ... is increasingly risking its normative power’.15

According to Manners,16 there are six ways for NPE to promote its norms abroad: contagion (the unintentional diffusion of norms that func-tions much like Nye’s mechanism of attraction); informational diffusion (the diffusion of norms that results from a range of strategic communications, similar to the spread of American values via global television networks such as CNN in Nye’s soft power theory); procedural diffusion (the insti-tutionalisation of normative behaviour, for instance via partnership and co-operation agreements [PCAs]); transference (norms are diffused when the EU trades goods, provides financial aid or technical assistance, etc.); overt diffusion (the diffusion of norms that results from the EU’s physical presence in third countries); and the cultural filter (the construction of knowledge and ideas, as well as social and political identities).

Despite NPE’s popularity, this concept has been extensively criticised by other scholars. For instance, Helene Sjursen contests the very idea of the EU as a normative power, which she understands as ‘seek[ing] to overcome power politics ... by emphasising the rights of individuals and not only the rights of states to sovereign equality’.17 Adrian Hyde-Price believes that the EU does not differ from other international players because it likewise pursues narrow interests ahead of moral or normative considerations.

In Hyde-Price’s view, the EU looks as nothing else than ‘an instru-ment of collective hegemony’18 that resorts to various types of power to pursue the goals of a classic nation-state. Such criticism is all the more valid as normative power is not posited by Manners himself as being the opposite of military power. The author of NPE, however, attenuates this judgement by specifying that ‘the more normative power builds on military force, the less it becomes distinguishable from traditional forms of power, because it no longer relies on the power of norms itself ’.19 All in all, normative power does not exclude a priori an ad hoc use of hard power as the best realist tradition would suggest.

Other original interpretations of the EU’s normative action have recently emerged in the political science field, blending the impact of norms and values analysed by Manners with new readings of how the EU may act as a more coercive player enforcing its interests through the lens of diverse regulatory mechanisms. Chad Damro has thus proposed to theorise the EU as Market Power Europe (MPE), arguing that it ‘may unintentionally externalise its policies and measures simply because the size of its internal market makes its standards attractive to outsiders’.20


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5Introduction

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In international relations theory, structural realists21 and constructivists22 have produced prolific writings about the role of power in world politics. While the former focus largely on hard power elements such as military preparedness and economic strength, the latter see reputation, trust and similar social constructions as the fundamentals of global politics in the post-modern world. The concept of smart power has been making steadily its way into academic debates since the early 2000s when Joseph S. Nye23 and Suzanne Nossel24 wrote on the subject independently of each other.

Its rising influence stretches further to the policy world. America’s top diplomats have spoken repeatedly of smart power and its variants as a better way to spread and strengthen the United States’ influence around the globe. In January 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice coined the term ‘transformational diplomacy’,25 while her successor, Hillary Clinton, later made the promotion of smart power one of her tenure’s priorities.26

In the past few years the normative side of the EU’s foreign policy has become a frequent element of the European political discourse as well. Official documents and speeches more often than not recite like mantras the core values underpinning the EU, which normally include peace, democracy, human rights, freedom and justice. However, Nye’s soft power concept clearly has the preference over that of Manners, for it is generally better known and more widely referenced.

Yet, there are conceptual differences between the two. ‘Soft power is a resource or tool of national foreign policy to be chosen and wielded alongside hard power’,27 write Ian Manners and Thomas Diez. They argue further that normative power, which remains a theoretical concept that seeks to account for socialisation in international relations, cannot be considered as a foreign policy tool nor can it be wielded for the sake of national interests. Meanwhile, EU policymakers seem to favour a more proactive stance on the Union’s normative resources, which they wish invariably to put to the service of its global policy agenda.

In a speech at the European Network of Political Foundations in November 2008, chairman Barroso said rather emphatically, ‘Europe has [its] soft power. By its own example it can help the consolidation of democracy’.28 Three years later, Herman Van Rompuy delivered a lecture at the University of Zurich, in which he said as follows:

Although our range of ‘hard power’ is limited, our ‘soft power’ should not be underestimated. But the ‘hard truth about soft power’ is that it is not easy and by no means automatic. Soft power is not about just being soft and handing out money. The effective use of soft power requires a consistent and


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comprehensive game plan addressing our objectives, our means, and the ways we apply them.29

Another example of a public defence of the EU’s norms and values was offered by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, baroness Catherine Ashton, at an event organised by Corvinus University of Budapest in February 2011. She said at the time, ‘[...T]he EU has soft power with a hard edge – more than the power to set a good example and promote our values. But less than the power to impose its will’.30

While admitting that the EU had little if any conventional power in its arsenal, Ashton still highlighted its rising global influence. ‘When so many countries wish to be our partners’, she explained, ‘we have the opportunity to build relationships that can make a difference to their citizens’ lives, and ours’.31

Earlier, in September 2007, the EU’s Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, had given a lecture at Columbia University in New York. She had then told her listeners that some kind of smart power grounded in the EU’s norms and values could be a good response to many of Europe’s foreign policy challenges.32

EU member states are also increasingly aware of the Union’s normative power being both real and effective. In March 2013, the foreign ministers of Germany, Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands sent an open letter to Barroso, asking him to ‘place greater emphasis on promoting a culture of respect for the rule of law’33 on a Union-wide scale.

The opening statement of this collective appeal recalled the impor-tance of the fundamental values in which is grounded the very European identity. ‘Human rights, democracy and the rule of law’, the letter read, ‘are at the heart of our European identity. Our common values more than anything else are the glue which binds our nations together. At the same time they fundamentally shape Europe’s image and soft power around the world’.34

The existence of the EU’s normative power has been accepted for years if not decades by European media, in both positive (‘it contributes to regional and international peace’) and negative (‘it leaves Europe disarmed in the face of Russia, China and the United States’) terms. Moreover, the realness of its rules and norms is now recognised outside of Europe, too. The American news magazine The Christian Science Monitor wrote in its coverage of an April 2013 diplomatic deal, successfully brokered


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7Introduction

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by the EU between Serbia and Kosovo, that the former Yugoslav states ‘no longer use “hard power” to settle differences because the use of “soft power” by the rest of Europe appears to be winning the day’.35

There is today an extensive literature discussing the EU’s role in international affairs36 and the implications of normative power for its relations with both European (former Yugoslav republics in the Western Balkans) and non-European actors, especially in the developing world (Asia, Africa, Latin America). Multiple rules and norms – enforced by the EU internally and transferred to third countries through interna-tional and bilateral agreements, development programmes, and cultural and scientific co-operation – are now one of the favourite focus areas of European political studies after several waves of EU enlargement.

The globalisation of trade and the intensification of political, business and cultural contacts between Europe and the rest of the world have led the EU to expand its presence in the near abroad as well as in faraway territories. However, its external partnerships are marked by a certain hierarchy reflecting the strategic relevance of different countries and regions with which the EU has established formal relations.

The EU-United States strategic partnership37 has been historically a dominant theme in the field of European studies on both sides of the Atlantic, although the rise of China and the United States pivot to Southeast Asia are already taking a toll on the popularity of this research area. The EU’s relations with its Eastern neighbours, first and foremost with Russia,38 also have pride of place in the broader context of academic writings, owing to the relevance of the EU-Russian gas trade and Europe’s structural energy dependence on Moscow.

The academic community has been following closely of late the EU’s relationship with beneficiaries of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), such as Ukraine and Belarus.39 The political and economic stabil-ity of these two countries is consistently viewed as a guarantee of stability at the Union’s external borders with the former Soviet Union. The EU’s growing trade and economic ties with Southeast Asia, where China and India40 attract the bulk of policy efforts, are a source of lively academic discussions concerning Europe’s place in this strategic region.

At the same time, relations between the EU and post-Soviet Central Asia – comprising five republics sometimes called the stans: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan – still elicit modest interest from students of European politics.41 On the one hand, Central Asia is a very remote region that has no common borders with any of the


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EU member states and is unable to pose a direct threat to either political stability or security within the EU proper and its neighbourhood. On the other, it has been increasingly viewed by EU policymakers as a structural element of one of the world’s most unstable areas bordering on Russia, China, Afghanistan and Iran.

The European Commission characterises Central Asia as being ‘of geostrategic importance to the EU’, since it ‘represents a bridge to China as well as to Afghanistan and the Middle East’ and ‘is a source of significant energy imports for the EU’.42 The geopolitical significance of Central Asia for the EU’s external relations received particular recogni-tion at the moment of adoption of its strategy for Central Asia, which had been pioneered by the German presidency of the EU in the first half of 2007.

In light of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s military involve-ment in Afghanistan and the rise of energy geopolitics, Central Asia is now closely associated with the so-called New Great Game, a geostrate-gic rivalry among contemporary great powers for influence in Eurasia. In this context, the EU’s engagement with Central Asia tends to be viewed as a fragment of the broader picture of regional politics involving the United States, Russia, China, Iran, Turkey, India and South Korea as well as minor actors and regional organisations.

Yet, the EU’s normative power, the implications of which are regu-larly scrutinised in the likes of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia and Montenegro, just to name a few, has not merited so far any serious analysis in the case of Central Asia.43 This monograph thus offers a study of the EU’s involvement in the region in line with its past and current normative discourse. The primary aim of this book is to answer the following question: Is the EU’s normative power in Central Asia effec-tive, and if not, why?

While it may appear problematic to define effectiveness, as it is a concept that is necessarily based on a subjective understanding of expected outcomes (losses or gains), it may be useful to apply the three-rule principle conceptualised by the Swiss scholars Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig.44 By defining effectiveness as ‘the extent to which EU rules are effectively transferred to third countries’,45 they suggest a theoretical system of evaluation under which ‘[e]ffectiveness can be measured at the levels of rule selection in international negotiations and agreements, rule adoption in domestic legislation and rule application in domestic political and administrative practice’.46


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9Introduction

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0005

For the purposes of this research, we shall assume that if the EU’s normative power in Central Asia is effective, its norms and rules should be not only selected and adopted but also applied by partner countries.47 Given that this assumption presupposes the existence of norms trans-fer mechanisms, Ian Manners’s NPE will serve as a general theoretical framework. The forthcoming analysis of the EU’s normative foreign policy in Central Asia, as it is presented on the basis of concrete exam-ples in Chapters 1 and 2, will ultimately enable us to identify the main factors behind the success or failure of its strategic engagement. Several different types of sources will be used throughout the monograph. First, the EU’s official and legal documents are a source of valuable insight into how the EU positions itself on the world stage and in the framework of bilateral partnerships. They also shed light on the way in which the EU approaches its bilateral and regional relationships, including detailed information about its financial commitments and confirmed funding packages.

The two core functional treaties – the Rome Treaty of 1958 (also known as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union) and the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 (also known as the Treaty on European Union) – encompass general provisions regarding the EU’s external action and its normative basis. Other documents, such as bilateral partnership and co-operation agreements, the 2007 strategy for Central Asia and more technical papers, complement such a broad-based outlook with a more contextualised one. We will also use in our research a number of official documents that Central Asian governments have elaborated in response to the EU’s policies.

Second, our study will draw evidence from academic books and journal articles representing a wide range of views within the scholarly community as regards both theoretical and practical aspects of the EU’s normative power. Third, policy-oriented reports and briefs published by think tanks and policy research institutions will be quoted from time to time. Fourth and last, it is obvious that this book cannot attain its objec-tive without insights emanating from former and acting EU diplomats and project managers based in Central Asia. These are indeed the best-positioned individuals to evaluate in loco the effectiveness of the EU’s normative power.

This monograph consists of two chapters separated from each other as much thematically as chronologically. The first chapter will analyse the main areas of the EU’s normative action after the fall of the Soviet Union


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through 2007 when the EU adopted its strategy for Central Asia. As to the second chapter, it will look into the EU’s increasingly realist focus since mid-2007 on the thematic areas in which hard power has been the norm so far.

The conclusion will summarise our findings and provide a descrip-tive answer to the initial research question. We will thus be able to see whether the EU’s normative power – which may deserve here the same definition as the one that Nye once gave to soft power, that is, ‘an attrac-tion to shared values and the justness and duty of contributing to the achievement of those values’48 – has been successful or not in Central Asia.

Notes

The Norwegian Nobel Committee 1 The Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 (press release), 12 October 2012, <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/press.html> (accessed on 10 April 2013).Ibid.2 Ibid.3 Jagland, T. 4 Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony Speech, Oslo, 10 December 2012, <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/presentation-speech.html> (accessed on 10 April 2013).Van Rompuy, H. 5 From War to Peace: A European Tale (Nobel Peace Prize lecture on behalf of the EU), Oslo, 10 December 2012, <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/134126.pdf> (accessed on 10 April 2013).Barroso, J. M. 6 From War to Peace: A European Tale (Nobel Peace Prize lecture on behalf of the EU), Oslo, 10 December 2012, <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/134126.pdf> (accessed on 10 April 2013).Ibid.7 Nye, J. S. (2004) 8 Soft Power: The Means to Succeed in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs, p. 5.The traditional attributes of a nation-state include a territory under its sole 9 jurisdiction, a single currency, a standing army and an independent foreign policy. While the EU is not a state actor but a supranational one, its identity has been at the heart of endless debates about what it is and how it compares to other actors of world politics (see Ian Manners’s refusal to consider the EU in comparison to state actors and his insistence on what the EU does, not what it is or says). Consensus on this issue is still lacking. Yet, it remains clear


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http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/press.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/press.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/presentation-speech.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/presentation-speech.html

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11Introduction

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that the EU belongs to the select category of not so many global actors with considerable sway over international politics, even if it acts differently from others by placing its norms and values first.Duchêne, F. (1973) The European Community and the Uncertainties of 10 Interdependence, In: Kohnstamm, M., Hager W. (eds) A Nation Writ Large? Foreign-Policy Problems before the European Community, London: Macmillan, p. 20.Ibid., p. 124.11 Manners, I. (2001) 12 Normative Power Europe: The International Role of the EU, Paper presented at the European Community Studies Association Biannual Conference, Madison, Wisconsin: USA, p. 7.Manners, I. (2002) Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms? 13 Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(2), p. 252.Ibid14 ., p. 252.Manners, I. (2006) Normative Power Europe Reconsidered: Beyond the 15 Crossroads, Journal of European Public Policy, 13(2), p. 194.Manners, I. (2002) Normative Power Europe, op. cit., pp. 244–245.16 Sjursen, H. (2006) The EU as a ‘Normative’ Power: How Can This Be? 17 Journal of European Public Policy, 13(2), p. 249.Hyde-Price, A. (2006) ‘Normative’ Power Europe: A Realist Critique, 18 Journal of European Public Policy, 13(2), p. 227.Berenskoetter, F., Williams, M. J. (eds) (2007) 19 Power in World Politics. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, p. 180.Damro, C. (2012) Market Power Europe, 20 Journal of European Public Policy, 19(5), p. 690.See the works of Hans J. Morgenthau, Henry A. Kissinger, Kenneth N. Waltz, 21 John J. Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt and Joseph M. Grieco.See the works of Alexander Wendt, Nicholas Onuf, Emanuel Adler, Peter J. 22 Katzenstein, Martha G. Finnemore, John G. Ruggie, Michael N. Barnett and Kathryn Sikkink.Nye, J. S. (2009) Get Smart: Combining Hard and Soft Power, 23 Foreign Affairs, 88(4), p. 160.Nossel, S. (2004) Smart Power, 24 Foreign Affairs, 83(2), pp. 132–136.Rice, C., 25 Transformational Diplomacy, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., 18 January 2006, <http://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/59306.htm> (accessed on 12 May 2013).United States Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton’s testimony before the 26 United States Senate Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., 13 January 2009, <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/politics/13text-clinton.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0> (accessed on 6 May 2013).Berenskoetter, F., Williams, M. J. (2007) 27 Power in World Politics, op. cit., p. 179.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/politics/13text-clinton.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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Barroso, J. M., 28 Political Foundations in Democracy Promotion, Development Cooperation and Political Dialogue, European Network of Political Foundations, Brussels, 13 November 2008, <http://www.european-network-of-political-foundations.eu/cms/About-ENoP/President-Barroso-speech> (accessed on 14 April 2013).Van Rompuy, H., 29 Europe’s Political and Economic Challenges in a Changing World (Special Winston Churchill Lecture 2011), University of Zurich, 9 November 2011, <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/125983.pdf> (accessed on 14 April 2013).Ashton, C., 30 A World Built on Co-operation, Sovereignty, Democracy and Stability, Corvinus University, Budapest, 25 February 2011, <http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-11-126_en.htm> (accessed on 14 April 2013).Ibid31 .Ferrero-Waldner, B., 32 The European Union and the World: A Hard Look at Soft Power, Columbia University, New York, 24 September 2007, <http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-07-576_en.pdf> (accessed on 8 May 2013).Westerwelle, G., Timmermans, F., Søvndal, V., Tuomioja E., 33 An Open Letter to José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, Brussels, 6 March 2013, <http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/bestanden/documenten-en-publicaties/brieven/2013/03/13/brief-aan-europese-commissie-over-opzetten-rechtsstatelijkheidsmechanisme/brief-aan-europese-commissie-over-opzetten-rechtsstatelijkheidsmechanisme.pdf> (accessed on 17 April 2013).Ibid.34 Editorial, Europe’s Ideals Win a Serbia-Kosovo Pact, 35 The Christian Science Monitor, 23 April 2013, <http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0423/Europe-s-ideals-win-a-Serbia-Kosovo-pact> (accessed on 24 April 2013).Besides the academic sources cited in the bibliography see: Woolcock, S. 36 (2012) European Union Economic Diplomacy: The Role of the EU in External Economic Relations. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited; Hill, C., Smith, M. (2011) International Relations and the European Union. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Emerson, M., Balfour R., Corthaut, T., Kaczynski, P. M., Wouters, J. (2011) Upgrading the EU’s Role as Global Actor: Institutions, Law and the Restructuring of European Diplomacy. Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS); Secchi, C., Villafranca, A. (eds) (2011) Global Governance and the Role of the EU: Assessing the Future Balance of Power. Cheltenham, Glos.; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing (in association with the Istituto per gli studi di politica internazionale, Milan, Italy); Youngs, R. (2010) The EU’s Role in World Politics: A Retreat from Liberal Internationalism. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge; Orbie, J. (ed.) (2009) Europe’s Global Role: External Policies of the European Union. Farnham, Surrey: Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate


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http://www.european-network-of-political-foundations.eu/cms/About-ENoP/President-Barroso-speech

http://www.european-network-of-political-foundations.eu/cms/About-ENoP/President-Barroso-speech



http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-11-126_en.htm

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-11-126_en.htm

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-07-576_en.pdf

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-07-576_en.pdf

http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/bestanden/documenten-en-publicaties/brieven/2013/03/13/brief-aan-europese-commissie-over-opzetten-rechtsstatelijkhe




http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0423/Europe-s-ideals-win-a-Serbia-Kosovo-pact

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0423/Europe-s-ideals-win-a-Serbia-Kosovo-pact

13Introduction

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Publishing Limited; Foradori, P., Rosa, P., Scartezzini, R. (eds) (2007) Managing a Multilevel Foreign Policy: The EU in International Affairs. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books; Elgström, O., Smith, M. (2006) The European Union’s Roles in International Politics: Concepts and Analysis. London; New York: Routledge; Magone, J. S. (2006) The New World Architecture: The Role of the European Union in the Making of Global Governance. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. The abundance of literature on EU foreign policy is a consequence of the new treaties that redistribute competencies between the EU institutions and member states, and extend progressively the EU’s purview to additional policy areas. The establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS), following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, has been a powerful stimulus for a re-examination of the EU’s role on the world stage and a scholarly rethink of its foreign policy tools. The position of High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy offers further a novel research angle to examine EU foreign policy.On EU-United States relations, see: Peterson, J. (2012) 37 Europe and America: The Prospects for Partnership. 2nd edition. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge; Toje, A. (2008) America, the EU and Strategic Culture: Renegotiating the Transatlantic Bargain. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge; Steffenson, R. (2005) Managing EU-US Relations: Actors, Institutions and the New Transatlantic Agenda. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Phillipart, E., Winand, P. (eds) (2004) Ever Closer Partnership: Policy-making in US-EU Relationship. Brussels; New York: Peter Land Publishing.On EU-Russia relations, see: Eskelinen, H., Liikanen, I., Scott, J. W. (2012) 38 The EU-Russia Borderland: New Contexts for Regional Cooperation. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge; Gomart, T. (2008) EU-Russia Relations: Toward a Way out of Depression. Washington: Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Paris: Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI); Antonenko, O., Pinnick, K. (2005) Russia and the European Union: Prospects for a New Relationship. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.On the EU’s relations with Ukraine and Belarus, see: Dabrowski, M., 39 Maliszewska, M. (eds) (2011) EU Eastern Neighbourhood: Economic Potential and Future Development. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag; Schmidtke, O., Yekelchyk, S. (2008) Europe’s Last Frontier: Belarus, Moldova, and Ukraine between Russia and the European Union. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.On the EU’s relations with China and India, see: Wouters, J., Wilde, T. de, 40 Defraigne, P., Defraigne, J.-C. (2012) China, the European Union and Global Governance. Cheltenham, Glos.; Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing; Wülbers, S. A. (2011) The Paradox of EU-Indian Relations: Missed Opportunities in Politics, Economics, Development, Cooperation and Culture. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books; Gaens, B., Jokela, J., Limnell, E. (2009) The Role of the European Union in Asia: China and India as Strategic Partners.


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Farnham, Surrey: Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Limited; Crossick, S., Reuter, E. (2007) China-EU: A Common Future. New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing.This is not to say that Central Asia is absent as such from the European 41 political studies. In 2008, a group of think tanks (FRIDE, CEPS and the Karelian Institute), the Open Society Institute and the Finnish Foreign Ministry set up jointly a Europe-wide observatory of the EU’s relationship with Central Asia. One of the programme’s goals is to ‘scrutinise European policies towards Central Asia, paying specific attention to security, development and the promotion of democratic values within the context of Central Asia’s position in world politics’ (European Union-Central Asia Monitoring Project’s (EUCAM’s) official website, <http://www.eucentralasia.eu/about-us/what-is-eucam.html>, accessed on 17 April 2013). Since its inception, EUCAM has acted as a policy-orientated initiative, and it aims primarily to monitor the implementation of the EU’s Central Asia Strategy.The official website of the European Commission, <http://ec.europa.eu/42 trade/policy/countries-and-regions/regions/central-asia/> (accessed on 21 April 2013).For some recent scholarly attempts to analyse the EU’s engagement with 43 Central Asia, see: Laruelle, M., Peyrouse, S. (2012) The European Union: Soft Power or Realpolitik? In: Laruelle, M., Peyrouse, S. Globalizing Central Asia: Geopolitics and the Challenges of Economic Development. New York: M. E. Sharp, Inc., pp. 58–74; Deugd, N. de (2012) Policy Transfer between the European Union and the Countries from Central Asia, In: Ahrens, J., Hoen, H. W. (eds) Institutional Reform in Central Asia: Politico-economic Challenges. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, pp. 232–247. The common trait of these writings is that they examine the EU’s role consistently through the lens of hard power geopolitics by measuring its influence against that of state actors. The normative dimension of EU foreign policy is thus largely ignored; in other cases it gets confused with interests at stake.Lavenex and Schimmelfennig proposed this framework to analyse the 44 implementation of EU rules, norms and practices by the countries that are either candidates for membership or have acquired or are preparing to acquire the status of associated partners. Although Central Asia does not fall under any of the above categories, its relations with the EU currently tend towards greater institutionalisation. Kazakhstan’s ongoing negotiations with the EU over an enhanced partnership and co-operation agreement may therefore be compared, as far as NPE is concerned, to the talks between the EU and the Eastern Partnership beneficiaries over their association agreements.


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15Introduction

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Lavenex, S., Schimmelfennig F. (2009) EU Rules Beyond EU Borders: 45 Theorizing External Governance in European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 800.Ibid46 ., p. 800.We earlier said that norms may be diffused both intentionally (procedural, 47 informational diffusion, transference) and unintentionally (contagion, the cultural filter). Regardless of the type of diffusion, the effectiveness of NPE depends on whether a partner state has agreed to a given norm and has made it a standard of its own. This may require some effort on behalf of the EU or may occur without its taking part in it. In a similar vein, Joseph S. Nye argues that neither soft nor smart power can be fully controlled.Nye, J. S. (2004) 48 Soft Power, op. cit., p. 6.


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.000616

1A Time To Gather Stones Together: The EU’s Normative Engagement with Central Asia in 1991–2007

Abstract: The first chapter of this monograph seeks to analyse the EU’s normative engagement with Central Asia in the period between the mid-1990s and 2007 when the EU–Central Asia strategy was adopted. It focuses on three key areas of EU policies, including the promotion of democracy and human rights, technical assistance and trade and economic co-operation. If the EU failed to promote its democratic and human rights norms in Central Asia, limited success was achieved in the two other fields, albeit with wide variances among the countries. Partnership and co-operation agreements that were the main source of EU policies prior to 2007 have proved their limited efficiency.

Keywords: democracy; economic co-operation; human rights; PCA; technical assistance; trade



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17A Time To Gather Stones Together

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As the Cold War was nearing its end, the so-called parade of sovereign-ties triggered by Estonia’s proclamation of independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) caused the unravelling of the world’s second superpower. After Uzbekistan’s decision to follow Tallinn’s exam-ple in June 1990, the other Central Asian republics proclaimed their sovereignty within months and became de jure independent by the close of 1991.

As Julie A. George argues, the demise of the Soviet Union and the rise of nationalism offered to external players unprecedented oppor-tunities to penetrate the once-closed political environment of Russia’s strategic backyard.1 While it previously had been firmly isolated from overseas influences by living under Moscow’s direct oversight, Central Asia became suddenly exposed to an array of foreign actors. Its post-independence regimes started to drift away from the former Russian patron in search of new national identities.2

By that time, Russia’s superpower status had been undermined by a weakened economy, growing political turmoil and the uncertainty over the future of its strategic partnerships in Eastern and Central Europe. This allowed Central Asian republics to witness the massive arrival of major oil and gas corporations, foreign banks, mining giants and inter-national donor agencies. The Americans, the British, the Germans, the Italians and the Turks all lobbied aggressively for their interests in the region. As to the European Union (EU), it stayed largely on the sidelines of local politics.

According to Laure Delcour, the EU’s initially limited commitment to Central Asia stemmed from the fact that the region was being viewed from Brussels as both remote and relatively stable.3 Alexander Warkotsch adds to her analysis by arguing that due to the EU’s prevailing focus on the post-communist transitions in Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, it had no clearly defined political interest to engage with Central Asia.4

The EU established formal relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with the signing, ratification and entry into force of bilateral co-operation agreements at the end of the 20th century. Turkmenistan’s choice of regional isolationism, which took the form of perpetual neutrality,5 entailed serious limitations for its ties with the EU.

Although the EU-Turkmen bilateral accord was signed in May 1998, it has yet to be ratified by the European Parliament and the majority of member states. In Tajikistan, which had earlier been engulfed by a


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protracted civil war, the signing of a similar agreement became possible only in 2004, followed by its ratification six years later.

The September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the global war on terror unleashed by the George W. Bush administration came as a turning point in the EU’s assessment of Central Asia’s geos-trategic significance.6 EU foreign policy has since focused more closely on security and political stability, especially in the wake of the ouster of the Taliban from neighbouring Afghanistan. Another key focus of the Union’s external action in the region became energy, although it still would take a few more years to develop a comprehensive policy approach in this field.

The first chapter of this manuscript offers to study the three core areas of the EU’s pre-2007 engagement with Central Asia: democracy and human rights, technical assistance, and trade and economic co-opera-tion. An analysis will be made of the norms diffusion mechanisms that the EU mobilised between 1991 and 2007 to promote Normative Power Europe (NPE) and of the local regimes’ responses to them. The effective-ness of NPE will be judged based on the rule selection, adoption and application framework.

1 Democracy and human rights or why the end of history has never happened

In the wake of the collapse of the USSR, which Russian President Vladimir Putin once called ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe’7 of the 20th century, the renowned US political scientist Francis Fukuyama reit-erated his famous end of history thesis that he had first expounded in a 1989 journal article. The author argued, among other things, that ‘[a]t the end of history there are no serious ideological competitors left to liberal democracy’.8 In the past, people tended to reject liberal democracy, but after the disintegration of the communist camp, there emerged an appar-ently general consensus as to the perception of liberal democracy as ‘the most rational form of government’.9

Fukuyama was at the time one of the numerous Western thinkers to hail the global spread of democratic values as a catalyst to profound polit-ical and socioeconomic changes in the post-Cold War world. However, such optimism showed soon its limitations. In Central Asia, the lack of prior democratic experience, the tribal structure of local societies and


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the dominant patrimonial mode of governance constrained significantly the advent of Western ideas.10

Elite replacement is an area in which almost no progress was achieved during the first post-independence years. By analysing the formation of a new ruling cohort in Kazakhstan between 1989 and 2002, Jonathan Murphy makes clear the lingering influence of the Soviet past on the contours of post-1991 elites. He argues further that the ruling political class, whose identity is hardly distinguishable from that of the Soviet nomenclature, has sought by all means to prevent the emergence of an ‘independent acquisition class’.11

The United States’ former ambassador to Russia and Stanford University professor Michael McFaul wrote back in 2002 that democ-racy was likely to take root only in those post-Soviet states where old elites and new pro-democracy forces shared the same amount of power. Otherwise, if the proponents of an authoritarian system proved to be substantially more powerful than their fewer democratic rivals, a transi-tion towards democracy was most often doomed to fail. ‘If the powerful believed in democratic principles’, McFaul argued, ‘then they imposed democratic institutions. But if they believed in autocratic principles, then they imposed autocratic institutions’.12

Alongside McFaul, most other international relations scholars think that the historical lack of democratic governance inevitably makes later democratic undertakings miscarry. Yet, there are some others who favour a more nuanced approach to post-communist transformations. Paul Kubicek contends, for instance, that as the countries of Central Asia faced formidable challenges associated with their sudden acces-sion to independence, a rapid democratisation was both unrealistic and counterproductive.13

The plausibility of successful political reforms in places that languished for decades if not centuries under autocratic regimes, as happened in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, has been questioned rather exten-sively by contemporary scholars.

Richard Rose and Doh Chull Shin observe astutely that ‘there is no certainty that incomplete democracies will become complete’.14 The existence of unfinished democratic transformations heightens consider-ably the risk of future intra- and interstate conflicts. According to the American political scientists Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, ‘formerly authoritarian states where democratic participation is on the rise are more likely to fight wars than are stable democracies or


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autocracies’.15 The bloody civil war in Tajikistan (1992–1997) offers in this respect a vivid illustration of how a rudimentary democratic proc-ess – during which old influence and patronage networks are dissolved without being replaced by any viable structures of a different kind – can lead to chaos.

The first stage of the EU’s engagement with post-Soviet Central Asia occurred against the backdrop of a slowly advancing process of nation-build-ing often followed by setbacks if not overt crises, as in the case of Tajikistan. The EU dedicated initially the bulk of its bilateral efforts to the implementa-tion of aid programmes which were geared to the task of improving living standards and generating opportunities for trade with the region.

Democracy and human rights had thus remained on the sidelines of the EU’s local policy agenda throughout the 1990s before it negoti-ated and signed partnership and co-operation agreements (PCA) with three Central Asian states, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. At the moment of the signing of these PCAs (in 1995 for Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, and in 1996 for Uzbekistan), Central Asia was perceived by the EU as a single monolithic bloc of post-Soviet countries facing roughly similar challenges. Yet, the texts of the three PCAs have been marked from the outset by notable differences.

The EU-Kazakh and EU-Kyrgyz PCAs are identical as far as democ-racy and human rights are concerned. Article 1 of each PCA states that a key objective of the partnership is ‘to support Kazakh [or Kyrgyz] efforts to consolidate ... democracy’.16 Article 2, which is subsumed under Title I General Principles, emphasises the role of universal values in the two countries’ bilateral relations with the EU. For the purposes of illustra-tion, it reads as follows:

Respect for democracy, principles of international law and human rights as defined in particular in the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, as well as the principles of market economy, including those enunciated in the documents of the CSCE Bonn Conference, underpin the internal and external policies of the Parties and constitute an essential element of partnership and of this Agreement.17

As regards the PCA with Uzbekistan, it is characterised by more explicit and frequent references to the development and consolidation of democ-racy, human rights and civil society. Article 1 of this PCA stipulates that the EU-Uzbek partnership seeks to ‘assist in the construction of a civil society in Uzbekistan based upon the rule of law’.18


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While the regular political dialogue between Brussels and Tashkent, as established by their PCA, is similar in technical terms to the ones between Brussels, on the one hand, and Astana and Bishkek, on the other, it encompasses stronger norms-related provisions. Article 4 of the EU-Uzbek PCA says that such a dialogue ‘shall foresee that the Parties endeavour to co-operate on matters pertaining to the observance of the principles of democracy, and the respect, protection and promotion of human rights’,19 with a particular focus on minorities.

Furthermore, Title VII of the PCA with Uzbekistan has no equivalents in the text of the two other agreements with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Its specificity consists in the fact that it commits Uzbek authorities to enhanced co-operation with the EU with a view to establishing func-tional democratic institutions and ensuring the effective and efficient protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It also details forms of technical assistance on behalf of the EU and stresses the need for a regular human rights dialogue with competent authorities (see Annex I). The EU-Tajik PCA, which was signed in 2004 and has been in force since January 2010, now incorporates similar provisions in Articles 4 and 66 (Title VII).

The above differences demonstrate clearly that the EU chose to differentiate20 among partner countries in Central Asia at an early stage of its political engagement with the region. The recognition of this fact tempers a critical view of the EU’s local democracy and human rights agenda prior to 2007.

By some accounts, the adoption of the strategy for Central Asia was made necessary by the presumed lack of country-wise differentiation and weak normative commitments in the PCAs. It is often said in support of this version that the EU’s older bilateral agreements with Russia, Ukraine and Moldova sport much stronger norms-based provisions. However, it should not be forgotten that the relevance of the EU’s relations with its eastern neighbours is in no way comparable to that of its partnership with Central Asia.

The preceding analysis of the PCAs’ focus on democracy and human rights issues reveals the EU’s choice of procedural diffusion as a means to further its normative power: norms are institutionalised and become compulsory to local partners. The success of this strategy should have stemmed from the growing popularity of liberal democracy as evidenced by statistics and scholarly works. After studying sets of data for 1989–2002, Christian W. Haerpfer argues in an article that the majority of


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citizens in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia and Belarus, as well as in Russia, showed up to the 2000s mass public support for democratic ideas.21

Haerpfer’s conclusions look more ambivalent in the cases of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan (there is no data for other Central Asia countries). The citizenry of the two countries expressed little interest towards national politics; their regimes were thus able to pursue antidemocratic practices without being exposed to the risk of popular anger.

According to Freedom House’s annual country rankings, all the five Central Asian republics were partly free in 1992, that is, shortly after the fall of the USSR. Kazakhstan remained in this category until 1994 and has since been invariably regarded by Freedom House as not free, while Kyrgyzstan has alternated between the two statuses (not free in 2000–2004 and 2010).22

Archives by Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirm the absence of any democratic progress in Kazakhstan in that period. In January 2006, HRW released a regular country report in which it described the Kazakh government’s 2005 lawsuit against a major opposition party as ‘[r]eversing one of the most significant steps toward democratic reform it had taken in recent years’.23 In neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, which sat on Freedom House’s free list throughout the 1990s, civil society activists blamed regularly President Askar Akayev for his growing authoritari-anism.24 The situation was much worse in Uzbekistan, where thrived a sort of ‘controllable democracy’,25 as the former head of the Open Society Institute in Tashkent once called it.

The EU’s critical reactions to human rights violations in Central Asia were channelled via common positions issued by the Council and reso-lutions adopted by the European Parliament. Although some common positions contained strong wordings, they were usually couched in cautious terms, reflecting the Council’s desire to preserve a regular dialogue with the Central Asian authorities. In contrast, resolutions drafted by Members of the European Parliament allowed the latter to voice more outspoken assessments unconstrained by political or diplo-matic considerations.

Between 1999 and 2007, the European Parliament adopted two resolutions on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, and four resolutions on Uzbekistan. In one such resolution motioned in the wake of the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Bishkek, the Parliament urged the new Kyrgyz regime to ‘start a real process of democratisation [...] based on a


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genuine multi-party system and respect for human rights and the rule of law’.26 Later, in June 2005, the EU’s legislature issued another resolution condemning the crackdown by the Uzbek security services on report-edly unarmed antigovernment protestors in the city of Andijan, in the country’s north.

The Andijan massacre that took the lives of several hundreds27 of demonstrators led Brussels to unveil a string of sanctions targeting high-ranking Uzbek officials.28 However, the EU’s response fell short of trig-gering the full range of so-called appropriate measures that are foreseen by Article 95 of its PCA with Uzbekistan and may theoretically result in a severance of bilateral ties. With the PCA having been suspended for some time, this measure did not entail any visible consequences for President Islam Karimov’s repressive regime.

The EU’s apparent weakness vis-à-vis its reckless Uzbek partner may be analysed with the help of Richard Youngs’s theoretical distinction between two governance modes relating to EU foreign policy. Youngs identifies a vertical mode structured as a hierarchy and a horizontal one which functions as a network. He argues that eventual variations in governance can be accounted for by bargaining power and domestic politics in geostrategic interest calculation.29 Since support to democracy requires little hierarchy,30 the EU prefers to mobilise networks which draw their strength from civil society. It is obvious that where civil socie-ties are too weak, networks cannot succeed.

As shown above, NPE failed to foster positive changes in Central Asia in the field of democracy and human rights in the 1990s and 2000s. While keeping under pressure the political opposition and civil society leaders, the local governments did not introduce into their domestic practices any rules or norms inspired by the EU’s experience. With the EU’s being unable to punish its interlocutors for human rights abuses and increased authoritarianism, it could not offer credible incentives to change either.31 Not only did NPE fail to resonate with the Central Asian elites but it also had no means to enforce its vision due to overriding political concerns.

2 Technical assistance: a life boat amid troubled waters

In November 1990, the heads of state and governments of 29 European countries as well as of the United States, Canada, Turkey and the Soviet


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Union convened in the French capital to adopt the so-called Charter of Paris for a New Europe. With the Paris Conference now being frequently compared to the Congress of Vienna of 1815 or the Conference of Versailles of 1919, the final declaration of that high-level gathering ushered in a new area of peaceful co-operation in Europe.

As the Cold War was nearing its end, Western powers braced them-selves to face a coming wave of geopolitical shifts across Eurasia, at a time when the communist bloc and the Soviet Union itself had already started to unravel. The signatories of the Charter proclaimed that ‘[t]he era of confrontation and division of Europe ha[d] ended’32 and that ‘henceforth [their] relations [would] be founded on respect and co-operation’.33

The dissolution of the USSR created serious difficulties for the now-independent republics, which suddenly found themselves confronted with an urgent need to readjust their Soviet-style governance models to the new realities. First, they were faced with mounting financial problems that resulted from the disruption of historically close economic bonds with Russia. Second, their bureaucratic apparatuses lacked professional cadres who could exercise a wider range of public administration duties in the post-independent context.

At the same time, Moscow’s ability to subsidise further the former Soviet allies was seriously circumscribed due to its own economic troubles and the political uncertainty of the early 1990s. This prompted international donors and financial organisations to fill the vacuum left by Russia in terms of supporting successor regimes in their respective nation-building efforts. Being one of the many foreign players of that time which acted as either donors or lenders of last resort vis-à-vis the former USSR, the EU moved to take the lead.

In 1991, the EU launched the Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) programme, which had been designed specifically in response to the economic and technical challenges that the post-Soviet states had then to tackle. The main objective of this programme was to grant aid packages to 12 independent countries of Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia,34 as well as to neighbouring Mongolia.35 It lasted for over 15 years before being replaced in 2007 by other assistance instruments.36

From the point of view of EU policymakers, TACIS became over time ‘an effective and successful programme with sustainable results’,37 thus earning the reputation of the one of the EU’s early foreign policy successes. Although Central Asia was not among the priority geographic


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zones for TACIS interventions,38 it still could benefit from multifarious funding opportunities in the areas in which the EU and the partner governments had identified shared concerns.

Between 1991 and 2010, Kazakhstan received over €140 million worth of bilateral technical assistance39 in support of over 300 projects within the framework of TACIS and the programmes that replaced it.40 During the same period, its Kyrgyz neighbour secured more than €130 million worth of EU funds,41 which it used to implement around 500 projects in such fields as socioeconomic development, support for state and admin-istrative reforms, poverty reduction and agriculture.

Central Asia’s poorest republic, Tajikistan, obtained in 1992–2010 the most generous aid packages worth over €500 million, including the lion’s share of bilateral assistance (€66 million) for the 2007–2010 budgeting period.42 TACIS accounted for a substantial share of this bilateral fund-ing, but other instruments were also mobilised, in particular humanitar-ian assistance mechanisms. They were specifically tailored to Tajikistan’s dramatic situation in the 1990s when a civil war raged across the country. As regards Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, they were covered by TACIS projects as well, although the scope of EU activities was far more limited there than in the three other states.

A detailed analysis of the TACIS regulations adopted by the Council in the period 1991–1999 makes apparent a strong normative dimension of the EU’s technical assistance within the former USSR. As the EU deepened its co-operation with ex-Soviet states, its focus on the respect and pursuit of principles that underpin its normative agenda worldwide strengthened, and new provisions were introduced one step at a time to reflect that change.

In its first TACIS regulation of July 1991, which paved the way to an initial aid instalment for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Council said rather vaguely that the EU’s assistance ‘shall be concentrated on sectors and geographical areas where it [could] play a key role in the continuation of the reform process’.43 Article 3 of the same regulation clarified the above guideline by adding that assistance would be focused on ‘measures aimed at bringing about the transition to a market economy and related projects’.44

After the expiry of a two-year trial period which had enabled the EU to draw preliminary conclusions about the functioning of TACIS, the Council adopted a new regulation that promised further technical and financial support in exchange for reforms. Unlike in the previous case,


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the scope of the 1993 regulation was extended deliberately to the fields of democracy and human rights, with the emphasis on the development by the beneficiaries of liberal market economies being reaffirmed.

The regulation posited that assistance from the EU could be effective only if there was real progress made towards ‘free and open democratic systems that respect human rights, and towards market-oriented economic systems’.45 In practice, this meant that if partner governments demonstrated their readiness to move forward with desired reforms, the EU would be willing to help them along the way.

Two more points are worth mentioning as regards the difference between the EU’s policy approaches to technical assistance to the CIS in 1991 and 1993. In Article 3 of the second regulation in question, the Council introduced explicitly a linkage between the economic and politi-cal domains, namely by insisting on the implementation of ‘measures aimed at bringing about the transition to a market economy and thereby reinforcing democracy’.46

Another distinctive feature of the 1993 regulation is the introduction of weak conditionality, with Article 1 stating for that matter that ‘[t]he level and intensity of assistance shall take into account the extent and progress of reform efforts’.47 Not only did the EU now ask its partners to pursue reforms but it also wished to see concrete results achieved by them since the first technical and financial aid instalments had been provided.

In June 1996, the Council adopted the third TACIS regulation, calling for the statement of priorities within the existing and future EU-funded projects. It laid further the basis for strong conditionality, insofar as Article 3(11) stipulated clearly that ‘in cases of violation of democratic principles and human rights, the Council may, on a proposal from the Commission, acting by a qualified majority, decide upon appropriate measures concerning assistance to a partner State’.48

While democracy, human rights and market reforms had established themselves firmly in the landscape of the EU’s assistance in the CIS, the 1996 resolution added two other issues to NPE’s agenda. These are ‘the promotion of equal opportunities for women and recipient countries’49 and ‘environmental considerations’.50

The last TACIS resolution of 1999 did not enact any major changes in comparison to the earlier ones, but still acknowledged the impor-tance of deeper societal transformations for the success of political and economic modernisation. Thus, its preamble said that ‘[t]he long-term


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sustainability of reform will require due emphasis on the social aspects of reform and the development of the civil society’.51

The history of TACIS shows that the EU practised between 1993 and 2007 the diffusion of norms by transference, through the exchange of best standards and experiences and the inculcation of values within joint projects. Despite the strong conditionality clauses in the last two TACIS regulations, the EU’s PCAs with Central Asia did not establish a formal relationship between the delivery of European aid and norms-based obligations. This choice constrained in a fundamental way NPE’s procedural diffusion via technical assistance.

Furthermore, the Council never resorted to ‘appropriate measures’ in Central Asia during the lifetime of TACIS, casting a long shadow over the actual value of its conditionality. In 2000, Patricia Davis and Peter Dombrowski wrote, for example, that TACIS’s safeguards against human rights violations ‘ha[d] little bite’, while the procedures for their enforce-ment had proved to be ‘extremely wieldy’.52

The EU’s reluctance to downscale or suspend projects in Central Asia, even as local regimes continued to consolidate their authoritarian rule, stands in stark contrast to its policy of sanctions against Belarus. As Joakim Kreutz recalls,53 Brussels decided in 1998 to freeze co-operation with Minsk after the regime’s crackdown on the opposition and its unlawful attempts to restrict civil liberties and freedoms.

By emphasising the technical side of its technical co-operation with Central Asia but downplaying the political one, the EU later succeeded in launching several large-scale regional projects that still exist today. The most important ones among them are the Border Management Programme in Central Asia (BOMCA) and the Central Asia Drug Action Programme (CADAP),54 as well as Erasmus Mundus, which offers schol-arships to non-EU nationals who wish to pursue their studies in European universities. Other high-profile initiatives, such as Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe (INOGATE55) (oil and gas infrastructure), Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA) (transcontinental trans-port) and Tempus (institutional co-operation among higher education organisations), also are part of the EU’s technical assistance.

De-politicisation56 of technical aid underlies further the EU’s 2007 strategy for Central Asia, whereby the Union chose to concentrate its bilateral assistance on the areas in which the odds of achieving success were deemed the highest possible. Its structural emphasis on economic, social or regulatory reforms, as opposed to more sensitive political ones, is


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clearly evidenced by the breakdown of funding made available under the 2007–2013 Regional Assistance Strategy for Central Asia (see Annex II).

This has allowed the EU to start an additional number of regional projects that have been met so far with positive reactions on behalf of the partner states. The Central Asian Research and Education Network (CAREN) was launched in 2009 to strengthen ties between universities in Europe and Central Asia and create joint opportunities for ground-breaking research. On the economic front, the Central Asia Invest programme, which traces its origins to 2007, aims to spur the growth of small- and medium-sized businesses as part of a broad-based effort in support of a more robust and competitive private sector.

While it is no doubt true that EU technical assistance has failed to promote NPE’s key norms such as democracy and human rights, its contri-bution to the improvement of living standards and technical regulations, especially in Central Asia’s poorest countries, still should be recognised.

Recent interviews with EU officials working in the area of develop-ment aid showed57 that various European and international technical norms had been adopted by the Central Asian authorities in such critical spheres as education,58 healthcare, environment, public administration and so on. Other foreign donors, including the World Bank, the United States Agency for International Development or the government of Japan, have made contributions of their own, but none of them can compare to the EU either in terms of aid volumes or in terms of impact.

However, there is still a long way to go from rule selection and adop-tion to rule application. Only Kazakhstan has made to this day limited progress in enforcing the above norms and rules, with the four other states lagging significantly behind due to the lack of political will and, to a lesser degree, bureaucratic hurdles. The famous constructivist scholar Alexander Wendt wrote in 1999 that ‘[s]tructural change occurs when actors redefine who they are and what they want’.59 No structural change has occurred yet in Central Asia as far as the promotion of NPE based on EU technical assistance goes.

3 Reaching beyond the borders: trade and economic co-operation

The collapse of the USSR entailed dramatic consequences for all the five Central Asian states whose economies were closely tied together


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within the Soviet command economic system. The latter was based on the advanced specialisation of production among Soviet republics and implied Russia’s structural support to its satellites in the form of regular subsidies and generous financial packages.

As Shafiqul Islam wrote in 1994, Central Asia’s separation from Russia was all the more painful in that their relationship in terms of produc-tion, trade and payments had become by that time highly interdepend-ent and interconnected.60 Its ‘sudden independence from Russia’, in which the American scholar saw ‘the giant core of the system’,61 left the region face to face with the prospect of economic hardship and growing social instability. Meanwhile, since Russia remained a major vector of influence in the ex-Soviet space, its own political and economic troubles of the early 1990s cast a long shadow over Central Asian politics. This made the task of recovery particularly arduous for the local post-independence regimes.

The Russian government’s unilateral decision to dismantle in August 1993 the rouble area came as a heavy blow to the flagging economies of the Central Asian republics. While Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan responded to this move by promptly introducing their national currencies, Tajikistan followed suit only in May 1995.

Despite Central Asia’s mounting distrust towards Moscow and its choice to distance itself from the former patron in a quest for new part-nerships, Russia did little if anything to reassure its southern neighbours. The Russian authorities opted instead for what would later become known as the Kozyrev doctrine,62 which was about the country’s swift rapprochement with the West to the detriment of its historical ties with post-Soviet nations.

Speaking in April 1998 at Rice University, the Russian scholar Andrei Kortunov described the Kremlin’s foreign policy during Boris Yeltsin’s first presidential term as being one of ‘paternalism’ and ‘disdain’ with regard to Central Asia. He argued further that the Russian leadership’s key concern at the time was that its relations with this not-so-strategic region could complicate in one way or another Moscow’s acceptance in the West.63

Sluggish cross-border trade, poor regional co-operation and countless bilateral disputes accounted for weak economic growth in Central Asia throughout the 1990s. According to the World Bank’s data,64 its gross domestic product (GDP) decreased sharply between 1993 and 1997, on the eve of the Asian financial crunch and Russia’s default on its foreign debt obligations.65


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Kazakhstan’s GDP declined by 5.3 per cent during that period, whereas Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan lost respectively 13 and 23 per cent of economic growth. However, the biggest slowdown happened in Tajikistan, which was quickly relegated by an unfolding civil war to the periphery of Central Asia’s post-1991 recovery. In 1993–1998, the Tajik GDP dropped by a whopping 44 per cent. As for Uzbekistan, it secured a 12-plus per cent growth rate in the 1990s, but had to pay the price of further regime radicalisation against the backdrop of a semi-autarchic, state-controlled economy.

Central Asia’s trade with Russia was heavily impacted by such down-ward trends.66 Their trade turnover amounted to $6.75 billion in 1993, $7.68 billion in 1995 and $6.83 billion in 1996, but decreased sharply to $5.41 billion in 1998.67 The following year, it dropped further to $3.69 billion. Although the bilateral commerce improved slightly in a later period, the trade figures for 2001 and 2002 were still much below their 1993 level.

To no surprise, developing trade relations with the West was consid-ered as an absolute priority by most Central Asian governments. The European market looked particularly attractive, given the EU’s rising demand for raw materials, first and foremost hydrocarbons, which Central Asia has in abundance. According to a now-retired Kazakh diplomat68 who previously oversaw his country’s economic co-operation with the EU, Kazakhstan also viewed its nascent partnership with Europe as a means to reduce its across-the-board dependence on the Russian neighbour.

While economic incentives are traditionally associated with hard power, they may underpin normative power as well, as Ian Manners himself acknowledges.69 Thus, the economic chapters of the EU’s PCAs with Central Asia have served since their entry into force to promote NPE by way of procedural diffusion, making respect for market economy one of the fundamental premises of bilateral co-operation. Transference in the field of trade has been another way for NPE to make its way into Central Asia due to a large number of trade-related technical assistance projects.

A detailed analysis of the PCAs sheds some light on the strategic importance of trade and economic co-operation within the broader context of the EU’s relations with Central Asia. While the first seven (six in the case of Tajikistan) articles of the PCAs deal with the general aspects of political co-operation, the ensuing chapters focus in far greater


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detail on trade and related issues. The contracting parties proclaim, for instance, that they ‘shall accord to one another most-favoured-nation treatment in all areas’70 in respect of the majority of trade issues. Each of them pledges further to ‘secure unrestricted travel via or through its territory’71 of goods supplied by or to the other party. Article 9(1) of the EU’s PCAs with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as Article 8(1) of its PCA with Tajikistan, posits the principle of free transit as an ‘essential condition’ of attaining their common goals.72

Other provisions concerning the EU’s trade and economic relations with Central Asia foresee the reciprocal waiver of quantitative restric-tions73 for the overwhelming majority of goods74 and the use of market-based prices75 in bilateral commerce.

NPE also permeates more technical articles such as the ones regarding labour relations,76 conditions affecting the establishment and operation of companies,77 the cross-border supply of services,78 current payments and capital,79 the protection of intellectual, industrial and commercial property80 and so on. All these norms correlate closely with the PCAs’ overarching objective of ‘complet[ing] the transition [of the partner states] into a market economy’.81

Legal harmonisation is stipulated by the EU as a core tool for the promotion of its norms and principles. Article 43 of its PCA with Kazakhstan states that the signatories consider ‘the approximation of [...] Kazakhstan’s existing and future legislation to that of the Community’82 as a conduit for the strengthening of economic ties. The article specifies to which areas such approximation shall apply in the first place, including customs law, banking law, company accounts and taxes, intellectual property, consumer protection, and technical rules and standards.83 Title VI of the EU-Kazakh PCA adds to this list additional policies and measures that are ‘designed to bring about economic and social reforms and restructuring of [Kazakhstan’s] economic system’.84

Although the EU’s bilateral relations with Turkmenistan remain very limited today due to the reluctance of the European Parliament and some member states to ratify their PCA, they are still governed by an interim trade agreement which entered into force on 1 August 2010. This accord does not provide for a step-by-step harmonisation of Turkmenistan’s legislation with EU norms. Yet, it lays down a number of basic principles in the field of trade before both sides finalise the establishment of a full-fledged political partnership framework.


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The EU’s institutionalised attachment to market economy principles in its Central Asia diplomacy has not been an obstacle to the consoli-dation of its trade presence across the region. The Union currently ranks among Central Asia’s major trade partners (alongside Russia and China) and is its primary source of sophisticated technologies and high-quality manufactured goods. Between 2000 and 2010, the Union’s imports from Kazakhstan grew by 15.3 per cent, while its combined exports to this country increased by some 14 per cent. In 2011, the EU accounted for over 49 per cent of Kazakhstan’s total external trade.

That same year, EU companies invested around $11.87 billion into the Kazakh economy, or roughly 60 per cent of the total inflow of foreign direct investments. According to the Union’s official statistics, EU-based businesses invested more than $56 billion in Kazakhstan in the period between 2000 and 2010.85 As regards the other countries of Central Asia, the results of their trade and economic co-operation with the EU pale in comparison to those of Kazakhstan, although several member states have managed to attain and keep leadership positions in select markets (such as German firms working in Uzbekistan’s industrial sector).

While the EU’s Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia is less trade-focused than the PCAs, it still abuts on a solid economic foundation. The strategy makes a special emphasis on the Union’s long-term commitment to the promotion of new regulatory and institutional frameworks whose shared goal is to create ‘an improved business and investment environment’.86 Economic diversification and liberalisation continue to be two fundamental pillars of the EU’s normative discourse after 2007.

Last but not least, Central Asia’s integration into the global economy, namely by means of acquiring full membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO),87 constitutes from the EU’s viewpoint a prerequi-site for closer trade and economic relations with the region, and should contribute to the spread of Western economic standards.

Similarly to the previous case of technical assistance, rule selection and adoption rarely have been followed by rule application as far as NPE’s economic and trade dimension is concerned. In Central Asia, only Kazakhstan has attempted so far to systematically introduce European norms and standards into its domestic legislation. In 2009, Astana adopted the Path to Europe state programme up to 2011, which pursued


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0006 Table 1.1 EU–Central Asia trade in 2000–2010, in €million88

Country

2000 2005 2009 2010AAGR*

2000–2010 (%)Change

2009–2010 (%)

Im** Ex*** Im Ex Im Ex Im Ex Im Ex Im Ex

Kazakhstan 3,821 1,427 10,276 3,576 10,752 5,313 15,841 5,231 15.3 13.9 47 −2Kyrgyzstan 140 71 17 110 29 186 199 210 3.5 11.5 575 13Tajikistan 100 42 106 88 75 101 57 144 −5.5 13.2 −24 43Turkmenistan 258 201 903 331 591 825 366 719 3.6 13.6 −38 −13Uzbekistan 653 584 529 590 318 972 415 1,243 −4.4 7.9 31 28Central Asia TOTAL

4,972 2,325 11,831 4,695 11,765 7,397 16,878 7,547 13 12.5 43.5 2

Note: where AAGR* is the average annual growth rate, Im** is imports and Ex*** is exports.


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among other things a wider use of the EU’s best practices in the domain of small- and medium-sized enterprises.89

Since 2013, the Kazakh government has been actively working to amend domestic law in line with the existing economic standards of both the EU and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The World Bank praised recently the authorities’ emphasis on improving the investment climate, which is seen by them ‘as a foundation for private sector development and competitiveness of the economy’.90 A series of informal interviews with Kazakh officials and EU diplomats91 showed further that Kazakhstan’s economic policies have been influenced significantly over the past ten years or so by Western experiences, specifically those in Europe.

Other Central Asian republics, with a notable exception of Turkmenistan, have pursued to varying degrees key market reforms, including trade liberalisation and privatisation of state assets.92 However, their choice almost always lies with international rather than EU norms, with the former being less strict and having fewer political implications.

The few improvements enacted to this day by the Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Tajik governments’ economic policy decisions elude consistently such complex issues as labour relations and the protection of intellectual, commercial and industrial property. Yet, these are areas in which the EU has developed first-class expertise after decades of heated debates and intense compromise-seeking at the member states’ level.

Despite the lingering problems with the enforcement of Western norms and rules, Central Asia seems to be standing firmly on a path towards full-scale economic modernisation. Kazakhstan’s upcoming accession to the WTO is expected to give a new stimulus to this process.93

It looks, however, problematic to assess objectively the EU’s current role in promoting market economy principles in the region, as other foreign players, such as the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United States, are active there. It is likewise difficult to judge to what extent the local regimes would have pursued similar modernisation poli-cies if they were not exposed to NPE or the soft power of Washington and international organisations.

* * *

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the EU moved slowly to recog-nise the importance of building a long-term relationship with Central Asia. Its first major contribution to the region was the technical and


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financial assistance through which it has ever since sought to promote its normative power and influence. Numerous technical projects that were launched during the initial phase of the EU’s engagement with Central Asia made the EU a major donor and a frontline overseas player in the region’s post-1991 socioeconomic development.

The EU’s relations with Central Asia were later formalised by means of adoption and ratification of four PCAs, as well as of an interim trade agreement with Turkmenistan. Democracy and human rights were thereby placed at the forefront of the Union’s bilateral foreign policies and their underlying normative agenda. NPE used procedural diffusion and transference as key instruments for spreading EU norms and values in the period up to 2007. The intensification of direct trade ties with Central Asia contributed further to the propagation of the EU’s best practices and standards in the economic field.

Yet, given the EU’s limited bargaining power vis-à-vis the local regimes, its desire to preserve a regular political dialogue with those and the lack of strong conditionality mechanisms capable of ensuring effective norms enforcement, NPE did not encounter much success. Democratising Central Asia’s political systems and improving the human rights situa-tion across the region was particularly challenging for the EU. It still was able to achieve some progress in the area of economic modernisation by inspiring and encouraging – alongside other Western and international actors – pivotal liberal reforms.

However, their implementation proved uneven among Central Asian republics. While Kazakhstan showed steadily the highest degree of interest towards EU experiences, its Turkmen neighbour remained, on the contrary, the least receptive, with the other three states occupying intermediate positions.

Notes

Wooden, A. E., Stefes, C. H. (eds) (2009) 1 The Politics of Transition in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Enduring Legacies and Emerging Challenges. London: Routledge, p. 98.Ironically, Central Asia’s accession to independence was at the time the last 2 thing that its governments wanted, being faced with the prospect of nation-building, a complex and challenging task to which they seemed to be largely unprepared. More than 20 years after the region’s independence, this process today is still unfinished in some places such as multiethnic Kazakhstan, where Russian remains the dominant language.


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Delcour, L. (2011) 3 Shaping the Post-Soviet Space? EU Policies and Approaches to Region-Building. Farnham, Surrey; Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing Limited, p. 91.Warkotsch, A. (ed.) (2011) 4 The European Union and Central Asia. London; New York: Routledge, p. 4.Turkmenistan’s neutrality was officially recognised by the UN General 5 Assembly in December 1995.See, for example: Efegil, E. (2010) The European Union’s New Central Asian 6 Strategy, In: Kavalski, E. (ed.) The New Central Asia: The Regional Impact of International Actors. New Jersey: World Scientific Publishing, p. 78.Putin Deplores Collapse of the USSR, 7 BBC News, 25 April 2005, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4480745.stm> (accessed on 26 June 2013).Fukuyama, F. (1992) 8 The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, p. 211.Ibid9 ., p. 211.Matveeva, A. (1999) Democratisation, Legitimacy and Political Change in 10 Central Asia, International Affairs, 75(1), pp. 30–39.Murphy, J. (2006) Illusory Transition? Elite Reconstitution in Kazakhstan, 11 1989–2002, Europe-Asia Studies, 58(4), p. 550.McFaul, M. (2002) The Fourth Wave of Democracy and Dictatorship: 12 Non-cooperative Transitions in the Post-communist World, World Politics, 54(2), p. 224.Kubicek, P. (1998) Authoritarianism in Central Asia: Curse or Cure? 13 Third World Quarterly, 19(1), p. 41.Rose, R., Shin, D. C. (2001) Democratisation Backwards: The Problem of 14 Third-Wave Democracies, British Journal of Political Science, 31(2), p. 333.Mansfield, E. D., Snyder, J. (1995) Democratisation and War, 15 Foreign Affairs, 74(3), pp. 79–80.Partnership and Co-operation Agreement establishing a partnership between 16 the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Kazakhstan, of the other part [1999], art. 1; Partnership and Co-operation Agreement establishing a partnership between the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Kyrgyz Republic, of the other part [1999], art. 1.PCA with Kazakhstan, art. 2; PCA with Kyrgyzstan, art. 2.17 Partnership and Co-operation Agreement establishing a partnership between 18 the European Communities and their Member States, of the one part, and the Republic of Uzbekistan, of the other part [1999], art. 1.PCA with Uzbekistan, art. 4.19 International nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), such as Freedom 20 House and Human Rights Watch, were actually the first to recognise significant differences among Central Asia’s new independent states, in terms of respect for democracy and human rights. Thus, Kazakhstan


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and Kyrgyzstan have always been ranked higher by Freedom House and HRW than Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, where basic norms of respectful behaviour towards minorities are still lacking. Being a reclusive regime with little exposure to the Western world, Turkmenistan has been absent altogether from international human rights rankings since its independence in 1991.Haerpfer, C. W. (2008) Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Russia and 21 the Commonwealth of Independent States, 1989–2002, International Political Science Review, 29(4), p. 423.Freedom in the World22 country rankings (1972–2013) by Freedom House, available at: <http://www.freedomhouse.org/> (accessed on 25 June 2013).Human Rights Watch World Report 2006, Kazakhstan by Human Rights 23 Watch, available at: <http://www.hrw.org/> (accessed on 25 June 2013).Anderson, J. (2000) Creating a Framework for Civil Society in Kyrgyzstan, 24 Europe-Asia Studies, 52(1), p. 90.See Ilkhamov, A. (2002) Controllable Democracy in Uzbekistan, 25 Middle East Report, 222, pp. 8–10.European Parliament Resolution on the situation in Kyrgyzstan and Central 26 Asia, 12 May 2005.Some witnesses say that the number of victims could have exceeded 27 1,500–2,000.Some Uzbek government officials were banned from travelling to the EU, 28 which also enforced an arms embargo and a limited trade sanctions regime against Uzbekistan. However, it did not go so far as to reconsider the general scope of its political relationship with Tashkent so that their normal working dialogue could resume in late 2010.Youngs, R. (2009) Democracy Promotion as External Governance? 29 Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 900.Ibid., p. 900.30 In other settings such incentives may include a membership perspective or 31 the status of associated partner with access to visa-free travel regulations and enhanced trade co-operation. The EU’s partners in the Western Balkans that are still not part of it, including Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, as well as members of the Eastern Partnership initiative, all fall under this category.Charter of Paris for a New Europe (as adopted by the participants of the 32 Conference on Security and Co-Operation in Europe on 21 November 1990 in Paris), p. 3.Ibid., p. 3.33 The beneficiaries of TACIS were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, 34 Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, as well as the five republics of Central Asia.TACIS-funded projects were implemented in Mongolia between 1991 and 35 2003.


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Since 2007, the EU has funded the majority of its bilateral assistance projects 36 in the former Soviet Union via the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which applies to the participants of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and Russia. In Central Asia, the recipients of EU aid have been covered by the worldwide Development Co-operation Instrument (DCI) and other specific assistance mechanisms, such as the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR).Frenz, A. (2007) 37 The European Commission’s TACIS programme (1991–2006): A Success Story, European Commission, available at: <http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/neighbourhood/regional-cooperation/enpi-east/documents/annual_programmes/tacis_success_story_final_en.pdf> (accessed on 6 July 2013).The same cannot be said of either Russia or Ukraine. Since 1991, they have 38 received respectively €2.8 billion and €2.5 billion worth of EU assistance.As reported by the EU Delegation to Kazakhstan at: <http://eeas.europa.eu/39 delegations/kazakhstan/projects/overview/index_en.htm> (accessed on 10 July 2013).Despite its discontinuation as of 2007, TACIS continued to finance the 40 projects launched prior to this decision until the end of 2012.As reported by the EU Delegation to Kyrgyzstan at: <http://eeas.europa.eu/41 delegations/kyrgyzstan/projects/overview/index_en.htm> (accessed on 10 July 2013).As reported by the EU Delegation to Tajikistan at: <http://eeas.europa.eu/42 delegations/tajikistan/projects/overview/index_en.htm> (accessed on 10 July 2013).Council Regulation (EEC, Euratom) No 2157/91 of 15 July 1991 concerning 43 the provision of technical assistance to economic reform and recovery in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, art. 1.Ibid., art. 3(1).44 Council Regulation (Euratom, EEC) No 2053/93 of 19 July 1993 concerning 45 the provision of technical assistance to economic reform and recovery in the independent States of the former Soviet Union and Mongolia, preamble.Ibid., art. 4(1).46 Ibid., art. 1.47 Ibid., art. 3(11).48 Ibid., art. 3(7).49 Ibid., art. 3(7).50 Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 99/2000 of 29 December 1999 51 concerning the provision of assistance to the partner States in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, preamble.Davis, P., Dombrowski, P. (2000) International Assistance to the Former 52 Soviet Union: Conditions and Transitions, Policy Studies Journal, 28(1), p. 88.


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Kreutz, J. (2005) 53 Hard Measures by a Soft Power? Sanctions Policy of the European Union, Policy Paper No. 45, Bonn: Bonn International Centre for Conversion, pp. 37–38.For a more detailed discussion of these two programmes, see Chapter 2.54 For a more detailed discussion of this programme, see Chapter 2.55 The European Commission’s strategy of de-politicisation in the field of 56 technical aid may also be the result of its failure to apply conditionality in the context of complex decision-making where state interests often collide with those of the Union, while it proves difficult to identify precise criteria of non-compliance.Interviews in Brussels (July 2013), Bishkek and Dushanbe (both in May 57 2014).One good example of a successful diffusion of norms via technical assistance 58 is the Erasmus Mundus programme. As a Kazakhstan-based project manager said in an informal interview in July 2013, Erasmus Mundus has been ‘instrumental’ in increasing the EU’s visibility in the country by publicising in a fairly accessible and illustrative way the member states’ educational models among Kazakh students.Wendt, A. (1999) 59 Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 336–337.Mandelbaum, M. (ed.) (1994) 60 Central Asia and the World: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, p. 160.Ibid., p. 160.61 The author of this doctrine, which defined Russia’s foreign policy in the 62 first half of the 1990s, is Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign affairs minister between October 1991 and January 1996. He argued in favour of a long-term partnership with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia’s more active participation in the international financial institutions. Kozyrev was later heavily criticised at home for presumably contributing to the loss by Moscow of its superpower status and the diplomatic setbacks in the former Yugoslavia. His replacement by the hawkish Yevgeny Primakov led further to the re-examination of Russia’s foreign policy, which became more concerned with the post-Soviet space.Kortunov, A. (1998) 63 Russia and Central Asia: Evolution of Mutual Perceptions, Policies, Interdependence, Houston, Tex.: The James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Rice University, p. 9.Complete World Bank datasets for Central Asia in 1993–1997 and in later 64 years are accessible at: <http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?page=3> (accessed on 5 July 2013).The Russian financial crisis broke out in mid-August 1998 when it became 65 clear that Russia’s economic model was deeply deficient. Declining


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productivity, chronic fiscal deficits and the skyrocketing cost of the war in Chechnya (estimated at over $5.5 billion, excluding post-war reconstruction) had all contributed to its breakdown.As regards neighbouring China, which has become over time Central Asia’s 66 strategic partner by successfully challenging Russia’s trade monopoly, its share of regional trade was largely insignificant throughout the 1990s and in the early 2000s. In 1994, the trade turnover between China and Central Asia amounted to a meagre $360 million (for the purposes of comparison, it already stood at $4.34 billion a decade later). As a caveat, the official statistics do not account for clandestine cross-border trade that arguably represents an important chunk of traded goods.As reported by the national statistics agencies of Russia and the Central 67 Asian countries.Interview in Astana, July 2013.68 Berenskoetter, F., Williams, M. J. (2007) 69 Power in World Politics, p. 176.PCA with Kazakhstan, art. 8(1); PCA with Kyrgyzstan, art. 8(1); PCA with 70 Uzbekistan, art. 8(1); PCA with Tajikistan, art. 7(1).Ibid., art. 9(1); art. 9(1); art. 9(1); art. 8(1).71 Ibid., art. 9(1); art. 9(1); art. 9(1); art. 8(1).72 Ibid., art. 11(1); art. 11(1); art. 11(1); art. 10(1).73 Some categories of goods, such as coal and steel, textiles and nuclear 74 materials, are covered by special trade regimes which the EU has negotiated separately with each partner state.PCAs with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, op. cit., art. 75 12; art. 12; art. 12; art. 11.CAs with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, op. cit., art. 76 19–22; art. 19–22; art. 19–21; art. 17–19.Ibid., art. 23–29; art. 23–30; art. 22–28; art. 20–26.77 Ibid., art. 30–33; art. 31–34; art. 29–32; art. 27–30.78 Ibid., art. 41; art. 42; art. 40; art. 38.79 Ibid., art. 42; art. 43; art. 41; art. 39.80 This phrase is featured in Article 1 of the four existing PCAs.81 PCA with Kazakhstan, art. 43(1). Similar provisions were included into the 82 PCAs with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The same applies to next two references.Ibid., art. 43(2).83 Ibid., art. 44(2).84 As reported by the EU Delegation to Kazakhstan at: <http://eeas.europa.85 eu/delegations/kazakhstan/eu_kazakhstan/trade_relation/index_en.htm> (accessed on 17 July 2013).European Union and Central Asia: Strategy for a New Partnership [2007] 86 QC-79-07-222-29-C, p. 16.


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0006

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are Central Asia’s only current members of the 87 WTO, respectively since 20 December 1998 and 2 March 2013. Kazakhstan is expected to finalise its accession talks with the organisation by early 2015, with its candidacy being actively supported by the EU and most member states. Neither Uzbekistan nor Turkmenistan has made yet significant progress towards WTO membership.As compiled from Eurostat data.88 The Government of Kazakhstan’s State Programme 89 Path to Europe (2009–2011) [2008], unofficial translation, p. 6.Kazakhstan: On the Crest of the Oil Wave90 , Kazakhstan Economic Update, The World Bank, Spring 2013, available at: <http://documents.worldbank.org> (accessed on 11 July 2013).Interviews in Brussels, September 2013, and Astana, May 2014.91 See, for example, 92 Uzbekistan: Economic Development and Reforms, Achievements and Challenges, Uzbekistan Economic Report N. 3, The World Bank, April 2013, available at: <http://documents.worldbank.org> (accessed on 11 July 2013).Kazakhstan’s membership in a customs union with Russia and Belarus and 93 its future participation in the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), which was established by the three states in May 2014 and will be formally launched in January 2015, still raise some questions about the compatibility of Eurasian integration with WTO rules.


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.000742

2The EU’s 2007 Strategy for Central Asia: Promoting Values and Defending Interests

Abstract: The second chapter of the monograph seeks to analyse the EU’s normative engagement with Central Asia after the adoption of the EU Central Asia Strategy in 2007. While it still focuses on the promotion of democracy and human rights, it also takes into account the new realist dimension of EU policies. Energy and security have been two areas in which the EU has sought to increase its strategic influence via norms-based instruments. However, the EU has been mostly unsuccessful in these endeavours due to a number of factors, including the local regimes’ resistance to democratic change and Central Asia’s regional situation that favours hard power over normative power.

Keywords: Central Asia Strategy; democracy; energy; human rights; realism; security



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43The EU’s 2007 Strategy for Central Asia

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0007

As the German presidency of the EU was coming to an end, the European Council adopted on 22 June 2007 the EU Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia. Berlin, whose political and economic relations with the region had recently intensified, thereby unveiled an ambitious plan to draw it closer to Europe.

Another underlying goal of Germany’s move was to challenge the influence of the historical hegemon, Russia, and the rising star, China, over this strategic portion of the Eurasian continent. Earlier in December 2006, German foreign minister Franck-Walter Steinmeier had reportedly said that despite its historically close ties with both neighbours, Central Asia must remain free from the monopoly of any one of them.1

After the strategy was adopted, the German presidency of the EU issued a press release in which it said that the new ‘game plan’ ‘favours a balanced bilateral and regional approach which takes due account of the specific requirements and performance of each individual country’.2 While it aimed to set up a regular political dialogue with the whole of Central Asia, the strategy worked from the outset towards establishing a ‘broader foundation of shared values based ... on the rule of law and human rights’.3

Germany’s focus on building a strategic partnership with Central Asia mirrored its long-standing wish to enhance its own influence in a region of growing geopolitical importance. In the EU, the necessity to overhaul its relations with Central Asia had previously been discussed at length in scholarly and policy circles alike. Anna Matveeva argued in July 2006 that the EU ought to draft a realistic regional agenda that would enable it to transform the project-based activities with ill-defined objectives into a long-term strategy of action with prioritisation of goals and means to achieve them.4

By 2007, the EU had already laid the foundation for structured dialogues with its partners in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus.5 Meanwhile, the EU’s relationship with Central Asia was still governed by a series of bilateral agreements and only a few regional projects, which rarely intersected and followed short-term objectives. With energy and security issues having moved over time to the forefront of Central Asian politics, it became clear that the partnership and co-operation agree-ments (PCAs) were no longer adequate instruments to deal with the new challenges of the 21st century. The 2007 strategy therefore represents a concerted attempt to recalibrate the EU’s ties with Central Asia on


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a modified basis where realism and idealism no longer contradict each other.

In international relations theory, realism is known to stand for inter-ests (as determined by a nation-state), whereas idealism promotes and defends values that are most often universal rather than particularistic. By adopting a new strategy for Central Asia, the EU set out on a course to build a superstructure of interests on the normative foundation of democracy and human rights, the two universal values it has always championed in its foreign policy. To put it in a more technical termi-nology, the EU opted for a strategy that would ‘make a special effort to apply its principled approach in ways that are realistically operational in [a] difficult political environment’.6

In a clear departure from the previous 1991–2007 period in which the EU had limited the bulk of its engagement efforts to the areas where it sported the best expertise, the Central Asia strategy widened its scope to some new fields. The second chapter of this book will analyse the EU’s engagement in democracy and human rights as well as energy and security, with the last two areas having acquired increased importance from the EU’s post-2007 perspective.

As in the first chapter, an analysis will be made of the norms diffusion mechanisms mobilised by the EU after 2007 and of the local responses to them. The effectiveness of Normative Power Europe (NPE) once again will be evaluated on the basis of the rule selection, adoption and applica-tion framework.

1 Democracy and human rights: back to the basics?

Following a decade of unsuccessful prodemocracy rhetoric in Central Asia, the EU’s 2007 strategy puts a new emphasis on respect for democ-racy and human rights by partner states. It stipulates that a stable politi-cal system and a well-functioning economy both require the rule of law, respect for human rights, good governance and the development of liberal, transparent and accountable institutions.7

In a bid to support words with deeds as far as its values-based external action is concerned, the EU has pledged to intensify efforts in favour of better protection of human rights and an independent judiciary.8 Thus, one of the priority goals of the EU’s post-2007 engagement with Central


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Asia has since become the development of political structures grounded in the rule of law and international human rights standards.9

While the strategy lays down general principles and guidelines, the EU’s Regional Strategy Paper for Assistance to Central Asia in 2007–2013 represents a detailed outline of the financial commitments that underpin this political document. Democratisation, human rights reform, good governance and market economy are posited as core elements of the EU’s renewed engagement with Central Asia.10 At the same time, the EU sees the fight against poverty and continued progress towards socioeconomic stability as prerequisites for the promotion of its normative agenda, thereby tying development assistance to political reform.

Although the EU has placed good governance projects at the heart of its strategic partnership with the region, such projects were actually allocated for 2007–2013 not more than 25 per cent (around €187.5 million) of the funds offered under the Development Co-operation Instrument (DCI),11 the successor of Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS). Another source of funding was the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which had replaced in 2006 a similar programme dating back to as early as 1994. A third financial facility used by the EU to sponsor its human rights and good governance projects in Central Asia was the programme entitled Non-state Actors and Local Authorities in Development (NSLA).12

The mobilisation of two supplementary funding instruments contrasts with the EU’s exclusive focus on TACIS in the 1990s and the early 2000s. However, this should not obscure the fact that the former Soviet Union, and Central Asia in particular, are still marginal targets on the EU’s worldwide agenda, in comparison to other regions. For example, Central Asian states were scheduled to receive a meagre 0.75 per cent of the funds earmarked by the EU for so-called ‘in-country interven-tions’ of the 2011–2013 NSLA programme. During that two-year period, such interventions accounted for almost 83 per cent (or more than €583 million) of NSLA’s overall budget.13

As if it did so in response to those critics who have blamed it for exces-sive idealism in a predominantly realist world, the EU has recognised that Central Asia has a long way to go to become a land of democracy and human rights.14 Yet, it insists rather explicitly on the attractiveness of its own normative discourse, which hence takes on the look of a ‘funda-mental reference point in so far as it provides a model for democratic, political and economic transition which [it] must aspire to follow’.15


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Drawing from Central Asia’s earlier experiences with failed prode-mocracy reforms and the ineffective contribution of technical assistance to EU-brokered political transformations, the 2007 strategy reaffirms the EU’s long-term commitment to results. Like in the case of TACIS, it makes use of conditionality to ensure that the Union’s financial and technical assistance benefits only those partners whose policies comply broadly with its normative vision.

The 2007–2010 Indicative Programme puts it clearly that budget allocation decisions within the framework of annual action programmes in Central Asia must depend on democratic and human rights improve-ments.16 Yet, recourse to conditionality in EU foreign policy across the region has remained to this day an unfulfilled promise of sorts. It has been unclear in what precise circumstances and to what extent the EU is ready to limit its technical and economic assistance due to neglect for the norms and values that it strives to advance.

In practice, the concept of conditionality in the EU’s engagement with Central Asia consistently lacks clear-cut definitions and an operable methodology.17 No costs of non-compliance with EU rules and standards are specified either in the strategy or in the accompanying papers, so that Brussels’ eventual response to increased authoritarianism or new human rights violations is left devoid of substance.

The above analysis shows that procedural diffusion and transference have continued to be NPE’s privileged channels since 2007. It also has increasingly used informational diffusion to ensure better coverage of its local agenda. Bilateral human rights dialogues (HRDs) are presented by the strategy as an essential element of the EU’s political co-operation with Central Asian states in furtherance of ‘respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, sustainable development, peace and stability’.18

The first HRD took place in 2007 in Uzbekistan, and was followed in October 2008 by similar meetings between EU officials and representa-tives of the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities. In Turkmenistan, an ad hoc HRD had already been started on the EU’s proposal in 2005; it would be institutionalised three years later.

Having promised to raise human rights issues with each of the five governments,19 the EU has attempted to use these discussions platforms in order to highlight the cases of prominent civil society activists harassed for their critical statements. Thus, the controversial trial of Yevgeny Zhovtis,20 director of the Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and the Rule of Law, took centre stage at the October 2009 HRD


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in Astana. The recurrent use of his name in official talks with the Kazakh authorities no doubt contributed to Zhovtis’s early discharge in February 2012, given Kazakhstan’s close attention to its image in the West.

However, it is obvious that the persistence of human rights viola-tions and governmental abuse of power cannot be offset by occasional goodwill gestures with regard to high-profile activists and regime critics. As Vera Axyonova points out, Central Asian authorities are often tempted to show off their sincere commitment to human rights at the level of diplomatic rhetoric without taking enough steps towards actual improvements.21 Moreover, the EU’s persuasion tactics seem to be largely ineffective in the case of politically motivated trials, such as the one of November 2012 that sentenced to seven and a half years in prison Vladimir Kozlov, the leader of an unregistered party in Kazakhstan.22

HRDs are not the only novelty introduced by the 2007 strategy for Central Asia. Civil society seminars and the Rule of Law Initiative also aim to facilitate the development of a robust civil society and independ-ent media, both of which constitute from the EU’s perspective the basis of a pluralistic polity.23 So far, several such seminars have been organised with the participation of both EU-based and local nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). While their off-the-record format is usually praised by attendees, the inadequate ownership of joint human rights and good governance projects comes up as the most common critique.24

Transnational NGOs, which are known to operate powerful adver-tising and fundraising machines but often possess little knowledge of the local context, attract the lion’s share of EU funds. Instead, Central Asian NGOs are constrained for the most part by shoestring budgets and narrow staffing capabilities into accepting small-scale, low-impact projects. Some Central Asia observers thus have called for enhanced long-term support to civil society organisations at the national rather than the regional level25 as a means to improve both allocation of fund-ing and project evaluation.

As regards the Rule of Law initiative,26 which provides for increased interagency co-operation among competent authorities for the purpose of sharing best practices in the judicial field, it is not free from criticism either. The top-down process that characterises this initiative looks in many ways similar to the EU’s vertical governance mode in the Western Balkans, where citizens have enjoyed historically few opportunities to partake in EU-brokered reforms.27


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Among the countries of Central Asia, Kazakhstan alone has under-taken thus far some practical steps to ameliorate its human rights record. In 2009, President Nursultan Nazarbayev approved the 2009–2012 National Human Rights Action Plan (see Annex III), which listed a set of guidelines for future legislative reforms in this area.28 The plan in question had been elaborated with assistance from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the British and Dutch embas-sies to Astana. Alongside the 2009 Path to Europe programme, it was intended to emphasise the country’s attachment to the normative side of its relationship with the EU.

Although the National Human Rights Action Plan initially was warmly welcomed by foreign observers and the Kazakh civil society, its outcomes inspire little hope as to the foreseeable future. On 13 March 2013, the EU Delegation to Astana issued a statement referring to a conclusion by independent experts, saying that the recommendations of the plan had been complied with at only 22.6 per cent.29 It underlined further Kazakhstan’s ‘general trend to restrict the fundamental political rights and freedoms’ during the very implementation of the plan by the authorities.30

It should be noted here that democracy and human rights belong to a family of issues that oftentimes suffer from a lingering gap between rule selection and adoption, on the one hand, and rule application, on the other.31 Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig show in their pioneering research that this pattern repeats and perpetuates itself in multiple historical and geographic contexts.32

According to a Kazakhstan-based project manager whose responsi-bilities include organising HRDs and civil society seminars,33 the Kazakh authorities’ working agenda is punctuated by what she calls ‘strategic deadlines’. Those coincide with major bilateral events such as high-level conferences or review meetings. Once a conference or a meeting of this type is over, the implementation and follow-up of agreed-upon activi-ties tends to be put on hold or slows down fundamentally because of bureaucratic obstructionism and the lack of political will.

Another key problem concerns visibility. Several member states, such as the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, have been demonstrating greater effectiveness than the EU in terms of making their human rights agendas known and available to the target audience. As a result of this, member states have turned out to be more easily recognised for their work by ordinary Central Asians than the EU as a whole. Ensuring a


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better supply of non-technical, non-specialist information to citizens ahead of government officials is seen by most Central Asia experts as a sizeable challenge to the EU’s diplomacy.34

The reluctance of partner states to carry out concrete reforms and the lack of effective conditionality mechanics are not the sole obstacles to NPE’s success in Central Asia. There are also serious contradictions between values and interests on the EU’s side. EU-Uzbek relations provide a good illustration of this conundrum. After the adoption of sanctions against Tashkent in November 2005, several member states started to express their concern with the severity of those measures and called on others to soften if not scrap them altogether. The Guardian wrote in May 2007 that Germany was ‘pushing strongly to lift or ease’ the sanctions regime while turning a blind eye to Uzbekistan’s ‘appalling human rights record’.35

Andrea Schmitz argues that Berlin’s accommodative stance with regard to Tashkent’s organised crackdown on a popular revolt in Andijan was the direct consequence of its military stakes in the country.36 In fact, the southern Uzbek city of Termez has hosted a German military base since the deployment of the North American Treaty Organization’s International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Despite the publication of new reports about massive human rights violations on Uzbek soil, the EU finally decided to normalise its rela-tions with Tashkent by opening a full-fledged diplomatic outpost there in late 2011. As she was visiting Uzbekistan in November 2012, High Representative Catherine Ashton was careful enough to not air any detailed remarks about the local human rights situation. A high-ranking EU official later admitted in a private meeting that his management in Brussels was hard-pressed to ‘draw a straight line between the rhetoric and the reality’.37

This has prompted some EU watchers to question the very fundamen-tals of NPE. In Gordon Crawford’s view, the EU always likes to present itself as a normative power, but behaves consistently in the same way that a nation-state does, sacrificing norms to interests whenever it deems it necessary.38 For Katharina Hoffmann, economic considerations still are and will remain the driving force behind the EU’s foreign policy; it thus looks impractical from the Union’s vantage point to refuse to co-operate with repressive regimes, be it in Central Asia or elsewhere.39

EUCAM’s chief analyst, Jos Boonstra, writes further that the EU and its member states have not been making so far a strong case for


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democracy.40 Unsurprisingly, his expert assessment is shared by a significant swath of the European civil society. Several dozen NGOs sent in June 2012 a collective petition to the Union’s headquarters in which they were urging the EU to ‘stay true to its values at all times’.41 One of the grievances expressed in that letter was the EU was perceived by the NGOs as ‘allowing other interests in the fields of energy and security to serve as an excuse for downplaying or ignoring human rights on any occasion’.42

All in all, the EU’s 2007 strategy for Central Asia may have permit-ted it streamline the implementation of good governance projects and to introduce new forms of dialogue on human rights issues. Yet, it has failed to deliver on its initial promise to induce a substantive change in the region’s political outlook, with NPE struggling to date to make democracy and human rights a prominent part of the local governments’ agenda. Being the only country of Central Asia that prepares to sign an enhanced PCA with Brussels,43 even Kazakhstan has been backsliding on the reform process. Meanwhile, NPE has had zero impact in the other four states.

2 Energy and pipelines, or when geopolitics becomes a trump card

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the EU’s energy relations with Central Asia have been developing against the backdrop of the Union’s constantly rising dependence on imported hydrocarbons, especially from Russia. Building close ties with the region’s three oil- and gas-rich states, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, has long been viewed by Brussels as a lever to reduce Russia’s share of energy imports within the EU.

According to the 2013 data of the United States Energy Information Administration, Kazakhstan is endowed with around 30 billion barrels of proved oil reserves and ranks 13th in the world.44 It is known to have maintained the second-largest oil production in the former Soviet Union, only behind Russia, for over 20 years after its independence in late 1991. The country is also home to more than 2.4 trillion cubic metres of natural gas and ranks 14th on a global scale.

Although Uzbekistan’s oil reserves are much smaller than those of its northern neighbour, its natural gas riches are significant, being


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estimated at 1.84 trillion cubic metres; it thus ranks 19th in the world in terms of gas reserves and 13th in terms of gas output.45 Turkmenistan’s prospected natural gas resources today exceed 7.5 trillion cubic metres so that Ashgabat ranks fifth in the world.46 However, statistics show that its annual gas production is only slightly above Uzbekistan’s even if the latter has fewer reserves. The Turkmen authorities, however, expect to increase gas production substantially in the coming decade.

As for Tajikistan, it recently became an energy player in its own right after the discovery of several promising oil and gas deposits on its terri-tory. It has since been courted by such energy giants as France’s Total and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).47 Dushanbe has yet to emerge as a full-fledged stakeholder of bilateral and regional energy discussions in Central Asia with the participation of Russia, China and the West.

As Central Asian states were tapping in the early 1990s their respective energy reserves and signing long-term supply contracts with overseas clients, the EU’s gas dependence on Russia began to intensify. Last year, six member states (Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden) imported 100 per cent of their domestic gas consumption from Gazprom.48

During the same period, imports from Russia amounted to over half of the total consumption in Austria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.49 The EU’s largest economy, Germany, bought in 2013 almost 40 per cent of its natural gas from Moscow.50 Berlin’s decision to decommission by 2022 all of the German nuclear power plants51 is likely to deepen further its energy dependence on the Russian Federation.

Whereas Central Asia is now a key element of the Union’s energy diplomacy, which aims to diversify its oil and gas supplies, European businesses enjoyed little presence on the ground in the first post-independence years. Instead, United States companies were successfully negotiating at the time a series of lucrative contracts on the Caspian Sea.52 With EU-Russia energy relations becoming over time more complicated and vulnerable to political crises,53 EU-based firms rushed to Central Asia in the late 1990s to participate in the exploitation of its freshly discovered deposits.

Energy is considered traditionally a part of hard power diplomacy – and for good reason. It is not uncommon in international affairs that energy is used by one state as a power tool to exert pressure on another


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state or as a bargaining chip to obtain concessions from the latter.54 Nevertheless, the energy field is not entirely strange to normative power as long as it promotes norms and values. At the very beginning of its engagement with Central Asia and the broader post-Soviet space, the EU placed a strong bet on the transformation of its energy relations with the ex- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) along new normative lines, using for this purpose both bilateral and multilateral instruments.55 In particular, NPE resorted to procedural diffusion and transference, which it used the most in other areas as well.

In December 1991, the European Energy Charter, whose concept had been proposed initially by Dutch prime minister Ruud Lubbers, was signed in The Hague. It famously paved the way to the elaboration of an international treaty that was adopted three years later in Lisbon. Both the Charter and the Treaty pursue the shared goal of ensuring that ‘a commonly accepted foundation will be established for developing energy cooperation among the states of Eurasia’.56

All five of Central Asia’s states were among the first 30 signatories of the Energy Charter Treaty; their parliaments ratified it in 1995–1997.57 They also adopted the Protocol on Energy Efficiency and Related Environmental Aspects. This annex to the Treaty encompasses guide-lines for designing and implementing energy-saving programmes, and identifies areas of co-operation to protect the environment.58

The Energy Charter Treaty entered into force in April 1998. It seeks to strengthen energy security in Eurasia through the development of ‘more open and competitive energy markets’ and to further ‘the principles of sustainable development and sovereignty over energy resources’.59 The EU’s PCAs with Central Asia, particularly the ones with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,60 complement the Treaty’s provisions by striving to foster, inter alia, the improved management and regulation of the energy sector, the higher quality and security of energy supply, energy saving and efficiency, and so on.

In 1995, the EU launched the Interstate Oil and Gas Transport to Europe (INOGATE) programme, the number one objective of which is to promote a regular dialogue with post-Soviet states acting in their capacity of suppliers or transit countries. INOGATE advocates a better convergence of energy markets and enhanced energy security, investment attraction into the energy infrastructure and sustainable development.61 In November 2004, the EU inaugurated further within INOGATE’s framework the so-called Baku Initiative, under which Kazakhstan,


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Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the EU itself pledged to work together with a view to ‘achieving sustainable economic and social development as well as contributing to peace, stability and prosperity in the region’.62

The EU’s commitment to the promotion of shared norms and values in the field of energy was reaffirmed at the Astana Ministerial Meeting of November 2006 that was organised as a follow-up to the Baku Conference. Its final declaration mentions explicitly the development of alternative supply routes and the associated oil and gas infrastruc-ture.63 Ironically, Turkmenistan and China agreed a few months before to build a new pipeline to export Turkmen natural gas to the Chinese autonomous province of Xinjiang. A similar agreement had earlier been reached with Kazakhstan.

As China was tightening its grip on Central Asia’s oil and gas reserves and Russia was trying to preserve its historical monopoly on hydrocar-bon exports from there, the EU chose at last to join the great-power competition over pipelines. The 2007 strategy represents in this respect a tangible shift towards realist thinking in what appears to be one of the most strategic areas of today’s engagement with the region. This becomes clear from the strategy’s expression of a common interest in the diversi-fication of export routes, demand and supply structures and sources of energy. It also stresses the need to explore the possibility of direct gas deliveries from Central Asia to Europe.64

By adopting this strategy, the EU made public its willingness to study with the Central Asians all available options for the exploitation of oil and gas resources and their export to external markets. Furthermore, a reference to the envisaged construction of new pipelines to go westwards is of particular interest.65

Cognisant of the challenges faced by the EU in terms of defending its energy stakes in the region, the Council adopted in February 2008 a joint action granting to the EU Special Representative for Central Asia an authority to contribute to ‘the formulation of energy security aspects’.66 Before then, the holder of this office, which was established in 2005 to coordinate relations with Central Asia, had had no such mandate.

Despite these efforts by the EU to rebalance and optimise its energy policy in Central Asia, NPE witnessed a string of structural setbacks. Russia withdrew in October 2009 from the Energy Charter Treaty. It thereby made it impossible for Central Asian republics to comply fully with the Treaty’s most critical clauses, such as those concerning access to infrastructure. As regards the Baku Initiative, it merely stalled, with


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no visible progress having been achieved since the Astana Conference in late 2006.

This unfavourable turn of events led the EU to switch to the model of bilateral contacts. In December 2006, the Union signed a memo-randum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Kazakhstan that was primarily aimed at ‘facilitat[ing] the development of new energy transportation infrastructure of mutual interest’.67 Two other MoUs were subsequently signed with Turkmenistan in 2008 and with Uzbekistan in 2011.

The EU-Uzbek MoU includes numerous mentions of both the norms and values,68 on the one hand, and the interests,69 on the other, that the EU seeks to promote. The fact is that, in the absence of commercially viable proposals on behalf of the EU, neither of these agreements has had a lasting effect on Central Asia’s energy politics. During his visit to Astana in October 2011, EU Commissioner for Energy Günther H. Oettinger complained that while the EU-Kazakh oil and gas co-operation ‘rests on solid foundations’,70 more progress is required in order to ensure its long-term success.

The obvious failure of NPE in the energy domain seems to be not so much related to the content of EU policies as to the complex reality on the ground. The EU’s ambition to secure stable gas supplies from Central Asia via the projected Trans-Caspian Pipeline – that should run from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan across the sea before interconnecting with EU-bound pipelines – runs counter to several factors. Dominique Finon identifies them as the competition theory perspective (the EU cannot compete on equal terms with Russia and China), the coalition theory perspective (the EU project has limited support within Central Asia) and the transaction cost economics (the EU project is too expensive).71

Per contra, the Beijing-brokered Central Asia-China gas pipeline72 has been a commercially successful project that still benefits from robust support on behalf of the participating states and is based on a sound economic model. According to Shamil Yenikeyeff, the EU’s energy strategy in Central Asia can bear fruit only after the EU has succeeded in concluding long-term supply contracts with regional exporters.73 Unless the foregoing is achieved, the Trans-Caspian pipeline will remain a stillborn project and the EU’s gas talks with Turkmenistan are unlikely to progress any further, in spite of the declarations to the contrary. As of now, Central Asian states feel comfortable practising the wait-and-see tactics74 until an appropriate investment solution is put on the table.


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A high-level EU diplomat said in last year’s informal interview that the EU’s chances of moving forward with its energy projects in Central Asia were getting slimmer as China kept on clinching a growing number of oil and gas deals with the Kazakhs and the Turkmens.75 Russia also has been active in trying to thwart the EU’s norms diffusion in the Central Asian energy sector.76

For some observers, the EU’s insistence on respect for human rights and the rule of law and on further support for democracy is counter-productive to its energy diplomacy. This clearly is not either Russia’s or China’s case. As far as the latter of the two is concerned, the late Alexandros Petersen already wrote in October 2012 that ‘[Beijing] has achieved [in Central Asia] far more than Brussels could ever have dreamed’.77

3 Security and stability: reconciling values with interests

Throughout the 1990s, security was not a priority issue for EU-Central Asia bilateral relations. While the EU and states of the region pledged to pursue the convergence of their political views for the sake of stability and peace, none of the PCAs have referred explicitly to security or stabil-ity as such.78 Since Central Asia had long been considered by the West as part of Russia’s strategic backyard in the former USSR, it failed largely to generate interest in the EU.

Meanwhile, the stability of Central Asia itself was increasingly ques-tioned by both scholars and policymakers. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski, United States President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, wrote in a book that the collapse of the Soviet Union had ‘created a “black hole” in the very centre of Eurasia’.79

In Brzezinski’s analysis, this black hole had set in motion what he calls power suction the consequence of which would be nothing else but a very dangerous power vacuum.80 Brzezinski argued further that the Eurasian Balkans – a metaphor he used to speak of Central Asia – could become with the course of time ‘a cauldron of ethnic conflict and great-power rivalry’.81

The geostrategic significance of Central Asia was fully acknowledged by the EU in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States and the George W. Bush administration’s international


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war on terror. In December 2003, the EU adopted its first-ever security strategy that outlined the EU and its member states’ common vision of what Europe’s role in world affairs should be, at a time when American unilateralism was gaining steam.

The security strategy posited the EU as an increasingly global player which was willing to ‘share in the responsibility for global security and building a better world’.82 Unlike the United States, whose earlier attempts to marshal the support of the transatlantic allies in order to go to war against the Hussein regime in Iraq had revealed deep rifts among Europeans,83 the EU presented itself as a normative power deeply respectful of international law.

In the security strategy, the EU reaffirmed its commitment to acting by way of example and persuasion with a view to shaping norms and rules of the game rather than changing them by force; it also recognised that it could not compete with the United States without having a robust common security and defence policy.

‘[N]one of the new threats’, the 2003 strategy reads, ‘is purely military; nor can any be tackled by purely military means’,84 before insisting that ‘[d]ealing with terrorism may require a mixture of intelligence, police, judicial, military and other means’.85 The document did not mention Central Asia proper, but recalled the need to seek stability in neighbour-ing Afghanistan, which had become by then a safe haven for terrorism, extremism and organised crime.

In the same year 2003, the EU launched two regional programmes in Central Asia to help it tackle some security problems. The Border Management Programme in Central Asia (BOMCA),86 which grew out of a working arrangement between the European Commission and the UNDP, has since served to ameliorate cross-border co-operation and to facilitate legal trade and the transit of goods.

Today, BOMCA is one of the largest regional programmes entirely funded by the EU. It has allocated for the period 2003–2014 over €33.6 million worth of assistance to Central Asia.87 The programme’s current version includes four components, all of which are tailored to assist the region in carrying out the necessary institutional reforms and strength-ening protection of the national borders.

While BOMCA’s key objective is to reduce drug supply from Afghanistan, the Central Asia Drug Action Programme (CADAP), which is implemented by a group of member states, focuses on the demand side, instead. The ongoing fifth phase of CADAP was launched in 2011


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and has mobilised more than €5 million for the transfer of policy, legal and technical expertise.88 Thus, it is expected that CADAP will contribute via transference, just like BOMCA, to the spread of ‘EU and international good standards and best practices on drug policies’ in Central Asia.89

Although CADAP operates in a hard power sphere, its toolset is remarkably geared to NPE. The same cannot be said of the United States government’s heavy-handed approach towards drug trafficking on Afghan soil. In the 2009–2013 EU-Central Asia Action Plan on Drugs, the Council stressed the need to ‘collaborate in conformity with interna-tional law, while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms’.90 The plan mentions further the need to link CADAP activities with the Rule of Law Initiative which was inaugurated in November 2008.

BOMCA and CADAP represent the first two regional instruments devised by the EU in the field of security co-operation with Central Asia. However, the issue of security found its full reflection only in the 2007 strategy. Similarly to its policy in the area of energy (see the previous section), the EU had decided to infuse its security thinking with a realist dimension that implies for that matter dealing with hard security as well. Even though the strategy relegates a description of the EU’s and Central Asia’s common threats and challenges to the end of the 2007–2013 agenda, this should not be misleading. In fact, the second part of the strategy is unambiguously entitled EU Strategic Interests: Security and Stability.

‘The EU has an interest in security and stability ... in Central Asia’, the strategy states, ‘because strategic, political and economic devel-opments as well as increasing trans-regional challenges in Central Asia may impact directly or indirectly on EU interests’.91 Paragraphs dedicated to fighting region-wide drug trade and guaranteeing secu-rity at the borders with Afghanistan are complemented with explicit references to combating international terrorism.92 This statement no doubt reflects the EU’s desire to be engaged more actively in Central Asian security affairs, whereas it dodged consistently from broaching the topic in the past.

The EU’s desire to have a say on hard security was later revealed on the occasion of two EU-Central Asia security forums organised by the French and Swedish presidencies of the EU, respectively in 2008 and 2009. They were structured in the same fashion as the new regular energy dialogue with Central Asia and paved the way to a frank discussion of security challenges faced by the region. Talks also included such related topics as


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regional trade, economic development and an intercultural dialogue, all of them being part of NPE’s agenda.

On 13 June 2013, representatives of the EU and Central Asia met in Brussels to launch the High-level Security Dialogue. According to a joint communiqué published at the close of the meeting, this dialogue is perceived on both sides as a brand new discussion platform for address-ing various ‘political and security issues of shared concern’,93 including but not limited to terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking, as well as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) risks.94 The EU and Central Asia confirmed further their interest in ‘strengthening dialogue and co-operation on security issues’.95

Another EU tool in the security field is the so-called Instrument for Stability (IfS). It was established on 1 January 2007 and succeeded the Rapid Reaction Mechanism. Having utilised a budget of more than €2 billion for the period 2007–2013,96 the IFS has been mobilised so far in a single instance in Central Asia, namely after the deadly ethnic purges of June 2010 that affected the Uzbek minority of southern Kyrgyzstan.97 At the height of the crisis, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Foreign Ministers Council in Almaty decided to dispatch a 52-strong police force to the theatre of the clashes. As for the EU, it extended to the Kyrgyz Republic a comprehensive package of civilian aid.

The Commission’s 2010 annual IfS report highlighted the Kyrgyz case as a major success of the past 12 months.98 During its intervention in the south of the country, the EU sponsored the reconstruction of around 400 houses destroyed by the violence and assisted the post-revolution government in drafting a new constitution, holding a national referen-dum and organising early parliamentary elections. This shows that while the IfS is about political stability and crisis management, it is firmly grounded in normative principles.

Since 2007, the EU’s security policy in Central Asia has been seek-ing to promote the Union’s values and defend its interests thanks to a combination of transference-based NPE and interest-driven initiatives. The EU’s comparative advantage with regard to other external players, for example the United States, is that it is far from being viewed as a competitor, even less so a threat, by Russia and China, the key security actors in post-Soviet Central Asia. As Marlène Laruelle observes, while US-Russian relations are tense, the EU has never pursued the goal of reducing Russia’s participation in Central Asian security affairs and ‘will continue to perceive [the] region as partly linked to Moscow’s evolutions’.99


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The EU’s military weakness also makes it a comfortable partner to work with; this weakness explains better than anything else why Brussels values so much the principle of regional consensus. In contrast, Washington’s direct military involvement in Central Asia and its control over the ISAF in Afghanistan are undoubtedly a source of displeasure for Moscow and Beijing. The latter are at odds with American competition with their respec-tive regional military blocs, the Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), in which both Russia and China dictate the rules of the game.

However, the current security situation in Central Asia and the hard power logic that permeates interstate relations among the stans will not allow the EU to become a security player to be reckoned with. According to Gustaaf Geeraerts and Eva Gross, the EU’s freedom of action in the field of security will at all times be constrained by its narrow focus on democracy and human rights.100 As we showed in the previous section of this chapter, the same has been true in the past few years in the energy field.

Some Central Asia watchers argue that the local regimes will reject continuously those EU-inspired reforms that are designed to change the existing power balances,101 with an eye to security developments in Afghanistan and amongst themselves. Kathleen Collins writes that Central Asia’s authoritarian leaders will continue to live with Russia’s and China’s security guarantees as long as they ensure their political survival without jeopardising rent-seeking.102

The growing uncertainty over the future of Afghanistan after the ISAF’s withdrawal, which is compounded by a rising number of attacks by the Taliban against government forces and foreign troops, plays clearly into the hands of the Russians and the Chinese. This does not bode well for NPE. At a time when Afghanistan-based Western donor organisations and aid workers, including those from the EU, are confronted with increased violence103 and therefore cannot execute their work properly, the EU still lacks a grand security narrative for Afghanistan and broader Central Asia.104 According to Justin Vaïsse and Susi Denisson, the EU’s ‘ability to shape events’ in Afghanistan will remain ‘very limited’.105

Ironically, while the EU’s security policy in Central Asia is in reality much softer than those of the United States, Russia and China, it has been criticised extensively in the EU itself for being too hard. Neil Melvin and Jos Boonstra already deplored in 2008 – that is, a year after the EU had unveiled its comprehensive strategy for Central Asia – the


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Union’s ‘narrow understanding of security and stability ... based on geopolitical concerns’.106

Since then, the Council and the Commission have underlined the need to broaden security co-operation with Central Asia to non-security areas (see Annex IV). As an EU official posted to Dushanbe acknowledged in an interview,107 the debate is far from over, and the EU has yet to figure out new ways to advance its interests without damaging its fundamental values and to promote its values without compromising its long-term interests.

* * *

After a decade of engagement with Central Asia, the EU adopted in 2007 a new regional strategy aimed at optimising its co-operation with the region. Besides the reaffirmation of the norms and values at the heart of NPE, the strategy voiced the Union’s intention to advance its core politi-cal, economic and security interests across Central Asia, with the EU thereby looking to make its policies more realist and realistic. Procedural diffusion and transference have since remained the main norms diffusion mechanisms in the EU’s toolkit.

One of the strategy’s principal goals was to ensure the strengthening of the EU’s stakes in the region in such hard power fields as energy and security, while preserving a strong emphasis on democracy, human rights, the rule of law and good governance. In a joint progress report published in June 2012, the Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) stated that security and development were ‘inter-linked and mutually reinforcing’.108

The EU also sought to modernise its technical assistance to Central Asia so that NPE would have a greater impact with greater resources. The June 2012 report reiterates the EU’s previous position that technical and financial aid should be more focused on areas where the EU can have ‘a real impact’ and should be differentiated ‘depending on country specificities’.109 Like in the past, respect for democracy and human rights is a central criterion by which Central Asia’s domestic performance is to be judged.

Yet, the outcomes are clearly frustrating. In 2007–2013, no rule application occurred in the field of democracy and human rights, and Kazakhstan even witnessed a rollback of some earlier reforms. The same holds true in regard to both energy and security, in which NPE’s chances of registering success have been hurt by the EU’s structural weakness and the behaviour of other foreign actors. The uncertainty of Central Asia’s


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security landscape, its expanding energy ties with China and Russia’s lingering military pre-eminence will continue to impede in future the EU’s actions in these two areas.

Notes

Lobjakas, A., Central Asia: EU Takes Its Case to Astana, 1 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 27 March 2007, <http://www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1075534.html> (accessed on 26 June 2013).Federal Minister Steinmeier Presents the EU Central Asia Strategy, 2 Official Press Release of the 2007 German Presidency of the EU, available at: <http://www.eu2007.de/en/News/Press_Releases/June/0627AAZAS.html> (accessed on 3 June 2013).Ibid3 .Matveeva, A. (2006) 4 EU Stakes in Central Asia, Chaillot Paper No. 91, European Union Institute for Security Studies, p. 95.Later, in May 2009, the EU launched the so-called Eastern Partnership, 5 inviting three states from Eastern Europe (Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus) and three other countries from the South Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) to deepen their relations. The ultimate goal of the partnership is to encourage the beneficiaries to adopt and implement EU norms and values, and the tool for this is the signing of association agreements.Emerson, M., Boonstra J. (eds) (2010) 6 Into Eurasia: Monitoring the EU’s Central Asia Strategy. Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Madrid: Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE), p. 9.EU Central Asia Strategy, p. 12.7 Ibid., p. 12.8 Ibid., p. 12.9 Other objectives of the strategy are the promotion of regional co-operation 10 and good-neighbourly relations in Central Asia, poverty alleviation and the improvement of living standards in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals.While TACIS used to work in the former Soviet Union and Mongolia, the 11 DCI lists among its beneficiaries as many as 47 countries in Latin America, Asia and Central Asia, the Gulf region (Iran, Iraq and Yemen) and South Africa.NSLA provides assistance to the NGOs and decentralised public bodies 12 that deliver services to the most vulnerable layers of the eligible countries’ populations.


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Non-State and Local Authorities in Development, 2011–2013 Strategy 13 Paper, available at: <http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/how/finance/dci/non_state_actors_en.htm> (accessed on 29 June 2013).European Community Regional Strategy Paper for Assistance to Central 14 Asia for the period 2007–2013 [2007], p. 8.Ibid15 ., p. 12.Central Asia Multi-annual Indicative Programme (2011–2013) of the EU 16 Development Co-operation Instrument (DCI) [2010], p. 25.The 2007 strategy relies largely on the PCAs in terms of political 17 conditionality. The ineffectiveness of the latter in this field has earlier been illustrated in the first chapter.European Commission’s Factsheet, EU Human Rights Dialogues in Central 18 Asia.EU Central Asia Strategy, p. 12.19 In September 2009, Yevgeny Zhovtis was sentenced by a Kazakh court to 20 four and a half years in a labour camp for manslaughter. This verdict was widely criticised by Kazakh and Western NGOs, some of which characterised it as ‘politically motivated’, given Zhovtis’s frequent critical statements about Kazakhstan’s political system.Axyonova, V. (2011b) 21 The EU-Central Asia Human Rights Dialogues: Making a Difference? Policy Brief No. 16, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), pp. 3–4.The EU sometimes seems feckless on its own soil. In May 2013, the wife and 22 the underage daughter of Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former chairman of major Kazakh bank BTA, were deported on false grounds from Italy to Kazakhstan. This incident provoked a brief political scandal in Rome, where a fragile government coalition all but collapsed. Ablyazov, who is currently under arrest in France, is wanted in several countries, including Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine, in a $6 billion fraud case. Incidentally, he is presented in Kazakh and Western media as President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s chief opponent.EU Central Asia Strategy, p. 14.23 Interviews in Astana and Bishkek, May 2014.24 Axyonova, V. (2011a) 25 Supporting Civil Society in Central Asia: What Approach for the EU? Commentary No. 17, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 2.The Rule of Law initiative is co-piloted in Central Asia by France and 26 Germany.Džihić, V., Wieser, A. (2011) Incentives for Democratisation? Effects of EU 27 Conditionality on Democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Europe-Asia Studies, 63(10), p. 1804.Human Rights Action Plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2009–2012) 28 [2007], p. 4.


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Kazakhstan has complied with the recommendations of the 2009–2012 National 29 Human Rights Action Plan only by 23%, EU Delegation to Kazakhstan, Astana, 13 March 2013, available at: <http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kazakhstan/press_corner/all_news/news/2013/13.03.2013_en.htm> (accessed on 2 July 2013).Ibid30 .For a detailed analysis of this phenomenon see: Freyburg, T., Lavenex, 31 S., Schimmelfennig, F., Skripka, T., Wetzel, A. (2009) EU Promotion of Democratic Governance in the Neighbourhood, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 929.Ibid., p. 916.32 Interview in Astana, July 2013.33 Axyonova, V. (2012) 34 EU Human Rights and Democratisation Assistance to Central Asia: In Need of Further Reform, Policy Brief No. 22, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 4.Traynor, I., Germany Pushes for Lifting of EU Sanctions on Uzbekistan, 35 The Guardian, 14 May 2007, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/14/iantraynor.international> (accessed on 3 July 2013).Schmitz, A. (2009) Whose Conditionality? The Failure of EU Sanctions 36 on Uzbekistan, The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, <http://old.cacianalyst.org/?q=node/5216> (accessed on 3 July 2013).Interview in Tashkent, July 2013.37 Crawford, G. (2008) EU Human Rights and Democracy Promotion in 38 Central Asia: From Lofty Principles to Lowly Self-interests, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 9(2), p. 172.Hoffmann, K. (2010) The EU in Central Asia: Successful Good Governance 39 Promotion? Third World Quarterly, 31(1), p. 97.Boonstra, J. (2012a) 40 Democracy in Central Asia: Sowing in Unfertile Fields? Policy Brief No. 23, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 3.Civil Society Appeal, 41 Five-year Anniversary of EU Central Asia Strategy: Placing Human Rights at the Heart of EU Action, June 2012, available at <http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/06/19/civil-society-appeal-five-year-anniversary-eu-central-asia-strategy> (accessed on 4 July 2013).Ibid42 .Kazakhstan’s enhanced PCA with the EU is slated to be signed by the end of 43 2014. In April 2013, the European Parliament voted a resolution conditioning the continuation of talks on this accord to respect for the rule of law and human rights in the country. However, it seems rather likely that the new PCA will be concluded regardless of whether Kazakhstan makes further headway in its democratic development, owing to the importance of its trade and economic partnership with Europe.


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http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kazakhstan/press_corner/all_news/news/2013/13.03.2013_en.htm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/14/iantraynor.international

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/may/14/iantraynor.international

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Kazakhstan overview (last updated in October 2013), US Energy Information 44 Administration, available at: <http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=KZ> (accessed on 3 April 2014).Uzbekistan overview (last updated in August 2013), US Energy Information 45 Administration, available at: <http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=UZ#ng> (accessed on 3 April 2014).Turkmenistan overview (last updated in September 2013), US Energy 46 Information Administration, available at: <http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=TX> (accessed on 4 April 2014).Lee, Y., CNPC, Partners Sign Tajikistan Oil and Gas Deal, 47 The Wall Street Journal, 18 June 2013, <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324520904578552454252003518.html> (accessed on 6 July 2013).Ratner, M. (ed.) (2013) 48 Europe’s Energy Security: Options and Challenges to Natural Gas Supply Diversification, Washington: Congressional Research Service, p. 10.Ibid., p. 10.49 Ibid., p. 10.50 Dempsey, J., Ewing, J., Germany, in Reversal, Will Close Nuclear Plants by 51 2022, The New York Times, 30 May 2011, <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/europe/31germany.html?_r=0> (accessed on 7 July 2013).In 1993, Chevron and ExxonMobil obtained from the Kazakh government 52 a 40-year licence to develop one of the world’s biggest oil and gas fields at Tengiz in the northeastern part of the Caspian Sea.Yazdani, E. (2008) The European Union and Central Asia, 53 International Studies, 45(3), p. 249.The Russian-Ukrainian gas disputes of 2006, 2009 and 2014 offer a telling 54 illustration of Moscow’s aggressive energy diplomacy by which it seeks to influence the authorities in Kiev in exchange for guaranteed supplies and lower purchase prices.Belyi, A. V. (2012) The EU’s Missed Role in International Transit Governance, 55 Journal of European Integration, 34(3), p. 268.European Energy Charter Overview, available at: <http://www.encharter.org/56 index.php?id=7> (accessed on 7 July 2013).The Energy Charter Treaty ratification dates are as follows for Central Asia: 57 Kazakhstan (18 October 1995), Uzbekistan (22 December 1995), Kyrgyzstan (8 April 1997), Tajikistan (17 June 1997) and Turkmenistan (17 July 1997).Energy Charter Protocol on Energy Efficiency and Related Environmental 58 Aspects (Annex 3 to the Final Act of the European Energy Charter Conference), Lisbon, 17 December 1994, art. 1(1).Energy Charter Treaty Overview, available at: <http://www.encharter.org/59 index.php?id=28> (accessed on 7 July 2013).PCA with Kazakhstan, art. 53; PCA with Uzbekistan, art. 53.60


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http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=KZ

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http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=TX

http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=TX

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324520904578552454252003518.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324520904578552454252003518.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/europe/31germany.html?_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/world/europe/31germany.html?_r=0

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INOGATE Overview, available at: <http://www.inogate.org/index.61 php?lang=en> (accessed on 7 July 2013).Conclusions of the Ministerial Conference on Energy Co-operation between 62 the EU, the Caspian Littoral States and their Neighbouring Countries, Baku, 13 November 2004.Ministerial Declaration on Enhanced Energy Co-operation between the EU, 63 the Littoral States of the Black and Caspian Seas and their Neighbouring Countries, Astana, 30 November 2006.EU Central Asia Strategy, pp. 18–19.64 Ibid65 ., pp. 19–20.Council Joint Action 2008/107/CFSP of 12 February 2008 extending the 66 mandate of the European Union Special Representative for Central Asia, art. 3(1).Memorandum of understanding and co-operation in the field of energy 67 between the European Union and the Republic of Kazakhstan [2006].They are about energy and environmental security, sustainable development, 68 increased co-operation on water and energy issues, the transparency of energy tariffs, and institutional reforms and so on.In the second part of the MoU with Uzbekistan, the EU commits itself 69 to assisting Tashkent in developing new pipeline infrastructure along the East-West axis with further transit towards the European market.Oettinger, G. H., 70 Remarks at the Sixth KAZENERGY Eurasian Forum, Astana, 4 October 2011, <http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kazakhstan/documents/press_corner/20111004_01_en.pdf> (accessed on 12 July 2013).Finon, D. (2011) The EU Foreign Gas Policy of Transit Corridors: Autopsy of 71 the Stillborn Nabucco Project, OPEC Energy Review, 35(1), pp. 55–63.The Central Asia-China pipeline was launched in December 2009 in the 72 presence of Chinese President Hu Jintao, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev and Uzbek President Islam Karimov. It runs from Turkmenistan over to China’s Xinjiang, across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Ashgabat plans to supply up to 65 billion cubic metres of natural gas a year to China in the next few decades.Yenikeyeff, S. M. (2011) Energy Interests of the ‘Great Powers’ in Central 73 Asia: Cooperation or Conflict? The International Spectator: Italian Journal of International Affairs, 46(3), p. 69.Kassenova, N. (2011) 74 Promises and Hurdles in EU-Kazakhstan Energy Cooperation, Commentary No. 20, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 2.Interview in Astana, July 2013.75 Kirchner, E., Berk, C. (2010) European Energy Security Co-operation: 76 Between Amity and Enmity, Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(4), pp. 876–877.


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Petersen, A. (2012)77 In the Hunt for Caspian Gas, the EU Can Learn from China. Commentary, Brussels: European Policy Centre, p. 2.The EU-Central Asia PCAs use the word ‘security’ with regard to food, 78 energy, law and order. It is also mentioned in the PCAs’ opening paragraph in which the signatories pledge their commitment to the principles of the OSCE. Central Asian countries have been members of this international organisation since January 1992.Brzezinski, Z. (1997) 79 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, p. 87.Ibid80 ., p. 24.Ibid81 ., p. 195.A secure Europe in a better world – European security strategy [2003], not 82 published in the Official Journal, p. 1.France and Germany both expressed their principled opposition to the 83 war in Iraq. Other member states, including the UK, Poland and Spain, supported it.European security strategy, op. cit., p. 7.84 Ibid., p. 7.85 BOMCA Overview (last updated on 20 June 2012), available at: <http://86 bomca.eu/en/about-us.html> (accessed on 12 July 2013).Ibid87 .CADAP Overview (last updated on 31 August 2012), 88 European Commission, Development and Co-operation – EuropeAid, available at: <http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/where/asia/regional-cooperation-central-asia/border-management-fight-against-drugs/cadap_en.htm> (accessed on 12 July 2013).Ibid89 .2009–2013 Action Plan on Drugs between the EU and Central Asia (as 90 adopted by the Council of the European Union on 19 May 2009), p. 11.EU Central Asia Strategy, pp. 8–9.91 Ibid., p. 26.92 EU-Central Asia High-level Security Dialogue Communiqué, Brussels, 13 93 June 2013, available at: <http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/137463.pdf> (accessed on 11 July 2013).Incidentally, Central Asia today is one of the eight priority regions under 94 the CBRN Risk Mitigation Centres of Excellence Initiative funded by the EU’s Instrument for Stability (IfS). It thereby hosts a permanent regional secretariat that coordinates IfS activities aimed at mitigating CBRN risks.EU-Central Asia High-level Security Dialogue Communiqué95 , op. cit.Instrument for Stability Overview (last updated on 30 June 2013), 96 European Commission, Development and Co-operation – EuropeAid, available at: <http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/how/finance/ifs_en.htm> (accessed on 12 July 2013).


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The violence erupted after Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev had been 97 deposed by a popular uprising in Bishkek in April 2010 and had fled the country.2010 Annual Report on the Instrument for Stability from the Commission to 98 the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, Brussels, 16 August 2011, p. 6.Laruelle, M. (2012) 99 US Central Asia Policy: Still American Mars versus European Venus? Policy Brief No. 26, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 4.Geeraerts, G., Gross, E. (2010) 100 Perspectives for a European Security Strategy towards Asia: Views from Asia, Europe and the US. Brussels: VUB University Press, p. 66.Boonstra, J., Marat, E., Axyonova, V. (2013) 101 Security Sector Reform in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan: What Role for Europe? Working Paper No. 14, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 17.Collins, K. (2009) Economic and Security Regionalism among Patrimonial 102 Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Central Asia, Europe-Asia Studies, 61(2), pp. 256–257.De Cordier, B. (2013) 103 The EU’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Policy in Central Asia: Past Crises and Emergencies to Come, Policy Brief No. 29, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 5.Peyrouse, S., Boonstra, J., Laruelle M. (2012) 104 Security and Development Approaches to Central Asia: The EU compared to China and Russia, Working Paper No. 11, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 16.Vaïsse, J., Dennison S. (2013) 105 European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2013, London: European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), p. 128.Melvin, N. J., Boonstra J. (2008) 106 The EU Strategy for Central Asia @ Year One, Policy Brief No. 1, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 3.Interview in Dushanbe, July 2013.107 Progress Report on the implementation of the EU Strategy for Central Asia: 108 Implementation Review and outline for Future Orientations [2012] 11455/12 COEST, p. 5.Ibid109 ., p. 5.


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Conclusion

Abstract: The conclusion sums up the research of the two chapters by offering a concise visual summary of the EU’s normative engagement in five thematic fields: democracy and human rights, technical assistance, trade and economic co-operation, energy and security. It states that EU normative power in Central Asia has been inefficient due to non-application of EU rules and norms, even if they have been selected and adopted by the countries of the region. Several factors account for this situation: authoritarian domestic politics, the complex security context and intra-EU political and economic difficulties. The conclusion calls for a smart power strategy.

Keywords: domestic politics; ineffective; patrimonialism; regional context; smart (power) strategy



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Since the beginning of European integration, normative power has become progressively Europe’s hallmark characteristic. With the enlarge-ment of the EU, the adoption and ratification of each new treaty and, in parallel, the widening of shared competencies at the Union level, the EU has moved ever closer to the global political arena. While member states’ policymaking still follows closely their respective national interests, it is now constrained more powerfully than some 20 or 30 years ago by common rules and norms, which are those of the EU as a whole.

Although the EU’s ability to act effectively on the world stage as compared to other big players still may be debated and even questioned, its uniqueness as a unit of international politics and the uniqueness of its normative power today are widely recognised. Jacqueline Hale writes that the EU currently plays the role of a ‘global standard-setter’ trans-mitting norms and values into the foreign policy realm.1 Charles Grant argues further that EU norms ‘should not be sniffed at’ for they underpin ‘an attractive social, economic and political model’.2

The EU’s self-positioning as Normative Power Europe (NPE) makes it different from the traditional nation-state in that it seeks first and foremost to project values outside of its own borders, shunning hard power on all occasions and, instead, utilising attraction, persuasion and the silent force of the negotiating table to defend its strategic and vital interests. It is far from surprising that this uncommon type of political philosophy has left a profound and lasting mark on the EU’s perception abroad.

In 2007, the Gallup International Association’s Voice of the People survey showed that thousands of people living in 50 countries considered the EU’s increased power as a positive thing.3 India and South Africa ranked second and third respectively, just after the EU; the United States lagged considerably behind after its international reputation had been undermined by aggressive unilateral policies in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As regards Russia and China, their increased power was said by respondents to be neither favoured nor resisted. Although both coun-tries were not engaged at the time in any serious wars or conflicts with neighbours, their bellicose image could not have been tempered even with the soft power discourses that Moscow and Beijing had constructed by then.

Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard believe that the EU’s uniqueness as a participant in world politics is mostly due to the fact that there is no one who would like to ‘balance its rise’.4 They also note that the EU, which


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has the largest peacekeeping force in the world, while its member states’ combined military budget is second only to the United States’, is widely seen as a ‘force for good’.5

There are still endless debates about where the EU’s power actually stands and what it should be for the EU to be successful in international politics. Some, like Ian Manners, think that the promotion of norms and values is the best way to further the EU’s interests abroad by build-ing co-operative relations predicated on shared perceptions and goals. Others advocate the need to acquire a hard power arsenal as well. This dilemma gets even more intricate in light of the coexistence of the EU as a supranational entity and of member states as its constitutive elements, on the one hand, and independent actors, on the other.

Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein argue that Europe lacks internal means to generate a strong sense of collective identity so that its real identity ‘lies in its relations with other international actors’.6 For them, the EU is a polity-in-the-making characterised by novelty and volatility.7 Manners’s NPE today is the subject of varying interpretations in the scholarly community. For example, Christopher Hill sees it as ‘halfway power’ that seeks to reconcile coercion with persuasion and leading by example.8

The EU’s normative engagement with Central Asia thus remains a part of the broader discussion about the Union’s power per se. Since the EU’s action in this region differs considerably from its earlier experi-ences in other portions of the world (Western Balkans, Eastern Europe, South Caucasus), it has necessitated a separate analysis. This is what we have tried to do in the preceding pages of this book, so as to determine whether NPE in Central Asia is effective or not, and if not why so. The three-rule principle (rule selection, adoption and application) has enabled us to scrutinise the essential elements of the EU’s norms projection in the region since 1991.

Our analysis shows that the EU’s normative power in Central Asia has proved so far ineffective since the application of its rules and norms has been scarce and episodic, if not absent altogether. Table C.1 summarises our key findings: the EU has failed to promote normative power in such sectors as democracy, human rights, energy and security, with only a few limited successes in the fields of technical assistance and trade and economic co-operation. Rule application discrepancies among Central Asian states are particularly illuminating.


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Table C.1 Assessment of the EU’s normative power effectiveness in Central Asia

Policy area Rule selection Rule adoption Rule application

Democracy and human rights

International democracy and human rights norms (UN, OSCE)

Limited rule adoption in Kazakhstan

Very limited to no rule adoption in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan

Very limited rule application in KazakhstanNo rule application in Kyrgyzstan,

Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan

Technical assistance International and European technical norms and best practices

Moderate rule adoption in Kazakhstan

Limited rule adoption in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan

Very limited rule adoption in Turkmenistan

Limited rule application in KazakhstanVery limited rule application in Kyrgyzstan,

Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan

Trade and economic co-operation

International norms (WTO, OECD)

Limited rule adoption in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan

Very limited rule adoption in Uzbekistan

No rule adoption in Turkmenistan

Limited rule application in KazakhstanVery limited rule application in Kyrgyzstan,

Uzbekistan and TajikistanNo rule application in Turkmenistan

Energy International and European (Energy Charter Treaty) norms and principles

No rule adoption in either country No rule application in either country

Security International norms (UN, OSCE)

No rule adoption in either country No rule application in either country


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It now looks important to identify the main factors behind NPE’s inef-fectiveness in Central Asia. The first factor lies within the purview of domestic politics. Sandra Lavenex and Frank Schimmelfennig write that ‘EU rules are more likely to be selected, adopted and applied if they reso-nate well with domestic rules, traditions, and practices’.9 In fact, NPE’s failure to foster democratic changes in Central Asia has much to do with the prevailing political conditions in the region. As Alexander Warkotsch observes, patrimonialism and clan politics have been from the outset the strongest obstacles to NPE. ‘[C]lans undermine the EU’s aim of contesta-tion through elections, the most basic element of democracy’,10 he notes. Emilian Kavalski suggests that the EU’s model of governance may be successful only if it produces a ‘substantial ... transformation’11 of Central Asia’s political environment.

The EU’s limited bargaining power vis-à-vis Central Asian regimes is further evidenced by its frequent choice of international norms (United Nations, Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe [OSCE]) over European ones. In 2009, a group of scholars showed in a piece of joint research that international norms are selected by the EU as guidelines for policy convergence with third states when EU rules lack legitimacy or are unlikely to be enforced smoothly.12

The second factor which explains NPE’s flagrant weakness in Central Asia is the dominant regional context in which Russia’s and China’s hard power diplomacy fits perfectly into the region’s interstate relationships. Some noteworthy parallels may be drawn here to other post-Soviet countries. While analysing the EU-Ukraine-Russia strategic triangle, Antoaneta Dimitrova and Rilka Dragneva proved that the effectiveness of EU policies in Ukraine correlates with the degree of interdependence between Ukraine and Russia.13

Thus, Ukraine’s energy and foreign policies were hardly influenced by the EU prior to 2009 (when their research article was published) because of the systemic dependence on Russia. Conversely, Russia’s control over Ukraine’s trade was weak and left the EU relatively free to develop economic relations with Kiev.14 Trends of a similar nature can be observed in Central Asia, where Russia and China today represent the major vectors of influence on foreign policy and defence as well as energy and security.

As far as some accounts go, the EU has demonstrated in the past that it is not averse to ramping up its force of coercion when dealing with the Russian and Chinese powers. Stefania Panebianco asserts that the EU’s


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history of relations with Moscow and Beijing reveals that its strategic interests oftentimes ‘prevail over the defence of principles and values such as human rights and democracy’.15 David Lewis uses the OSCE example to warn against such a change in the EU’s tactics. He writes that the OSCE runs the risks of changing its own identity ‘as the price of maintaining an active presence in Central Asia’.16 The EU seems to be faced with the same challenge.

Lastly, the effectiveness of NPE in Central Asia is undermined by extra-regional factors as well. Economic troubles in the Eurozone and, more broadly, the economic and financial crisis within the EU have impacted on the attractiveness of the European model. Ben Judah, Jana Kobzova and Nicu Popescu argue that the debt crisis of the Eurozone has taken its toll on intra-EU solidarity and dented the Union’s international prestige.17 Moreover, it is the cause of a ‘spill-over’ from the economic arena to the foreign policy field, leading to what they call ‘foreign policy disunity’.18 Ian Traynor remarks not without a grain of irony that ‘[t]he Russians and the Chinese ... don’t really need to play divide and rule with Europe’19 because the crisis has divided it.

One more reason for NPE to have attained very limited results in Central Asia is that the EU has proved unable to incentivise the region to implement the indispensable reforms. For Emilian Kavalski, the EU has not done enough to create a linkage between its recurrent calls for reforms and the dynamics of European integration. ‘[T]he EU is far short of conceptualising its role in the region’,20 he weighs. It goes without saying that the EU’s relations with beneficiaries of the Eastern Partnership are more advanced and forward looking, having as their ultimate goal closer co-operation through association agreements.

The nature of the EU’s international power is not the sole contentious issue in contemporary European political studies. Once it has been recognised, whatever its nature and origin, a second question arises as to how it can be enhanced. In 2006, Janne H. Matlary, Norway’s former state secretary for foreign affairs, claimed that the EU ‘must be able to employ coercive diplomacy’21 if it wants to be successful on the world stage. Her recommendation is supported by Franco Algieri, for whom the EU needs ‘more than a basket full of carrots and only some incre-mentally developed sticks to compete’.22

Such opinions stand in contrast to those advocating a more forceful emphasis on the normative side of the EU’s foreign policy. Thus, Michael E. Smith suggests that the EU ‘[should] increasingly assume the costs of


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ethical action even while maintaining its security and economic inter-ests’.23 Neil Melvin – who by the way knows well from his own experience the inner workings of the Energy Charter Secretariat and the OSCE – admits that the EU will never be able to compete in the foreseeable future with the United States, Russia and China on their playing field. However, it still can ‘build a meaningful role for itself based on what it does best: promoting liberal-democratic forms of modernisation’.24

Despite NPE’s being ineffective and weak in Central Asia, there is still a window of opportunity for the EU in this complicated region. The history of Central Asia’s democratic and modernisation experiences cannot be easily erased from the collective memory. Furthermore, the forthcoming political transitions in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where the ageing Soviet-style leaders will sooner or later relinquish the reins of power, present the EU with a chance to promote and inspire more radi-cal prodemocracy reforms. As Edward Schatz contends, when a regime transitions from one stage to another, its choices always depend upon earlier decisions that concerned entirely different issues but created a certain pattern of behaviour.25

Once this happens, EU policies addressing directly Central Asian citizens’ concerns, such as education, healthcare, environment, good governance, government transparency and so on, will likely be recog-nised as valuable contributions to the development of their respective post-transition societies. Jos Boonstra reminds us in this respect that the EU’s primary task is and will be ‘to work for the interests of Central Asians, where they are detached from those of the region’s leaders’.26

The history of the EU’s normative engagement with Central Asia is just one small part of its ongoing quest for ‘a world role that combines European values and interests’,27 as Jean-Yves Haine once described the EU’s key challenge in today’s globalised world. Central Asia itself is just one of the many regional theatres of the EU’s normative power, the one that is based on values, norms and rules, not the power of the sword.

Notes

Hug, A. (ed.) (2013) 1 Europe in the World: Can EU Foreign Policy Make an Impact? London: The Foreign Policy Centre, p. 32.Grant, C. (2009) 2 Is Europe Doomed to Fail as a Power? London: Centre for European Reform, p. 2.


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Gallup International Association (2007) Voice of the People. Zurich: 3 Gallup International Association; Ann Arbor, Michigan: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, available at: <http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/00223> (accessed on 22 November 2013).Krastev, I., Leonard, M. (2007) 4 New World Order: The Balance of Soft Power and the Rise of Herbivorous Powers. London: European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), p. 3.Ibid., p. 3.5 Checkel, J. T., Katzenstein, P. J. (2009) 6 European Identity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 224.Ibid7 ., p. 16.Hill, C. (2010) Checks and Balances: The European Union’s Soft Power Strategy, 8 In: Parmar, I., Cox. M. (eds) Soft Power and US Foreign Policy: Theoretical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. London; New York: Routledge, p. 194.Lavenex, S., Schimmelfennig F. (2009) 9 EU Rules Beyond EU Borders: Theorizing External Governance in European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 804.Warkotsch, A. (2008) Normative Suasion and Political Change in Central 10 Asia, Caucasian Review of International Affairs, 2(4), p. 67.Kavalski, E. (2007b) Whom to Follow? Central Asia between the EU and 11 China, China Report, 43(1), p. 53.Barbé, E., Costa, O., Herranz Surrallés, A., Natorski, M. (2009) Which Rules 12 Shape EU External Governance? Patterns of Rule Selection in Foreign and Security Policies, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 838.Dimitrova, A., Dragneva, R. (2009) Constraining External Governance: 13 Interdependence with Russia and the CIS as Limits to the EU’s Rule Transfer in the Ukraine, Journal of European Public Policy, 16(6), p. 869.Since the launch of the Eastern Partnership in 2009, the EU has been seeking 14 to capitalise on the moderate level of trade interdependence between Russia and Ukraine in order to extend its normative influence into the Ukrainian market. The deep and comprehensive free trade agreement (DCFT), which is an integral part of Ukraine’s association agreement, follows this logic.Bindi, F., Angelescu, I. (2010) 15 The Foreign Policy of the European Union: Assessing Europe’s Role in the World. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, p. 190.Lewis, D. (2012) Who’s Socialising Whom? Regional Organisations and 16 Contested Norms in Central Asia, Europe-Asia Studies, 64(7), p. 1235.Judah, B., Kobzova, J., Popescu, N. (2011) 17 Dealing with a post-BRIC Russia. London: European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), p. 49.Ibid.,18 p. 57.Traynor, I. (2012) A Hard Test for Europe’s Soft Power, 19 Fresh Thinking (Foundation for European Progressive Studies), (2), p. 13.


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Kavalski, E. (2007a) Partnership or Rivalry between the EU, China and 20 India in Central Asia: The Normative Power of Regional Actors with Global Aspirations, European Law Journal, 13(6), p. 844.Matlary, J. H. (2006) When Soft Power Turns Hard: Is an EU Strategic 21 Culture Possible? Security Dialogue, 37(1), p. 112.Algieri, F. (2007) A Weakened EU’s Prospects for Global Leadership, 22 The Washington Quarterly, 30(1), p. 114.Smith, M. E. (2011) A Liberal Grand Strategy in a Realist World? Power, 23 Purpose and the EU’s Changing Global Role, Journal of European Public Policy, 18(2), pp. 158–159.Melvin, N. (2012) 24 The EU Needs a New Values-Based Realism for its Central Asia Strategy, Policy Brief No. 28, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 5.Schatz, E. (2006) Access by Accident: Legitimacy Claims and Democracy 25 Promotion in Authoritarian Central Asia, International Political Science Review, 27(3), p. 280.Boonstra, J., Denison, M. (2011) 26 Is the EU-Central Asia Strategy Running out of Steam? Policy Brief No. 17, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM), p. 3.Haine, J.-Y. (2004) The EU’s Soft Power: Not Hard Enough? 27 Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, 5(1), p. 76.


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Annexes



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Annex I Partnership and Co-operation Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of

Uzbekistan

Source: http://eur-lex.europa.eu, © European Union, 1998–2014.

Title VII

Co-operation on Matters Relating to Democracy and Human Rights

Article 68

The Parties shall cooperate on all questions relevant to the establish-ment or reinforcement of democratic institutions, including those required in order to strengthen the rule of law, and the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms according to international law and Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) principles.

This co-operation shall take the form of technical assistance programmes intended to assist, inter alia, in the drafting of relevant legislation and regulations; the implementation of such legislation; the functioning of the judiciary; the role of the State in questions of justice; and the operation of the electoral system. They may include training where appropriate. The Parties shall encourage contacts and exchanges between their national, regional and judicial authorities, parliamentar-ians, and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).

Annex II EU Allocations to Central Asia in 2007–2013, by Sector

Source: Data compiled from the EU’s 2007–2013 Regional Assistance Strategy for Central Asia.


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EU allocations to Kazakhstan EU allocations to Kyrgyzstan

Economic development 35% Social protection 31%Good governance 25% Good governance 24%Public administration 16% Education reform 17%Civil society 9% Food security 12%Education 8% Rural development 8%Health 7% Civil society 4%

Economic development 4%100% 100%

EU allocations to Uzbekistan EU allocations to TajikistanGood governance 37% Social protection 45%Economic development 34% Agriculture 20%Healthcare 17% Public finance management 8%Inclusive education for children

with special needs9% Food security 8%

Europa House 3% Private sector management 7%Health management 5%Civil society 5%Nuclear safety instrument 2%

100% 100%EU allocations to TurkmenistanEconomic development 34%Good governance 25%Public finance management 18%Education reform 16%Europa House 7%

100%

Annex III National Human Rights Action Plan of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2009–2012)

Source: The Foreign Ministry of Kazakhstan (official translation from Kazakh).

The objective of the National Plan is the information of Heads of State, Parliament, and the Government of Kazakhstan regarding the human rights situation in Kazakhstan, the gaps in the national legislature and law enforcement practices, the level of legal protection of the individual and his knowledge of his rights, the improvement of the activities of institutions for the protection of rights, and the main problems in the sphere of human rights protection and concrete steps for their resolution.


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In addition, the National Plan promotes:

The definition of prioritised guidelines for work in the sphere of ▸

human rights protection, requiring the urgent coordinated action of all branches of government and NGOs with the wide and active support of the general population;The directing of the attention of governmental agencies and the ▸

public to unfavourable situations and unresolved problems in the sphere of human rights;The definition of basic guidelines for the development of legislation ▸

and law enforcement practices in Kazakhstan in the areas of human rights, contributory to the creation of an integrated system for the protection of human rights, combining internal and international standards and norms, and governmental and public mechanisms;The establishment of close coordination of national systems for the ▸

protection of human rights with international legal systems;The development of the legal education of the population. ▸

Annex IV Joint Progress Report by the Council and the European Commission to the European

Council on the Implementation of the EU Central Asia Strategy (Brussels, 28 June 2010)

Source: http://consilium.europa.eu © European Union, 1995–2014.

The Strategy defined seven key areas of engagement and led to the estab-lishment of three regional initiatives. All areas of the strategy remain important but greater emphasis is needed in key areas that have emerged as major challenges:

Security

Security aspects have become more important and co-operation ▸

should be intensified and deepened, building on the results of the EU-Central Asia Forum on security in Paris and the EU-Central Asia ministerial meetings. The shift of power in Kyrgyzstan is yet to reveal the full scope of its impact on Central Asian security. It will be necessary to expand the concept of security to include major


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international and regional challenges such as human security, combating drug trafficking and trafficking in human beings, precursors, nuclear and radioactive materials, uranium tailings, border management, bio-safety, bio-security, combating terrorism and preventing radicalisation and extremism, including via a continued emphasis on poverty alleviation. Combating corruption is an important element in countering many of these security challenges. EU mine action engagement needs to be pursued with a view to promoting the United Nations (UN) Conventions on humanitarian disarmament, supporting national capacity and regional initiatives, and providing assistance to victims and affected communities.


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Boonstra, J. (2009) The EU Strategy for Central Asia Says ‘Security.’ Does This Include Security Sector Reform? Policy Brief No. 10, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Boonstra, J. (2012a) Democracy in Central Asia: Sowing in Unfertile Fields? Policy Brief No. 23, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Boonstra, J. (2012b) EU Central Asia Policy: Steady as She Goes, Policy Brief No. 4, Central Asia Program: Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University.

Boonstra, J., Axyonova, V., Denison, M., Hale, J., Laruelle, M., Marat, E., Peyrouse, P., Tsertsvadze, T. (2012) Ten Tasks for the New EU Special Representative to Central Asia, Policy Brief No. 24, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Boonstra, J., Denison, M. (2011) Is the EU-Central Asia Strategy Running out of Steam? Policy Brief No. 17, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Boonstra, J., Hale, J. (2010) EU Assistance to Central Asia: Back to the Drawing Board, Working Paper No. 8, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

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Laruelle, M. (2011) Involving Central Asia in Afghanistan’s Future – What Can Europe Do? Policy Brief No. 20, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Laruelle, M. (2012) US Central Asia Policy: Still American Mars versus European Venus? Policy Brief No. 26, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

Manners, I. (2001) Normative Power Europe: The International Role of the EU, Paper presented at the European Community Studies Association Biannual Conference, Madison, Wisconsin: USA.

Matveeva, A. (2006) EU Stakes in Central Asia, Chaillot Paper No. 91, European Union Institute for Security Studies.

Melvin, N. (2012) The EU Needs a New Values-Based Realism for its Central Asia Strategy, Policy Brief No. 28, EU-Central Asia Monitoring (EUCAM).

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Internet Resources

Council of the European Union (http://www.consilium.europa.eu/homepage?lang=en)

European Commission (http://ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm)EU Delegation to Kazakhstan (http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/

kazakhstan/index_en.htm)EU Delegation to Kyrgyzstan (http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/

kyrgyzstan/index_en.htm)EU Delegation to Tajikistan (http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/

tajikistan/index_en.htm)EU Delegation to Uzbekistan (http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/

uzbekistan/index_en.htm)European External Action Service (http://www.eeas.europa.eu/)European Parliament (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en)Eurostat (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/

home/)Freedom House (http://www.freedomhouse.org)Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org)Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (http://

www.oecd.org)US Energy Information Administration (http://www.eia.gov)


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http://www.consilium.europa.eu/homepage?lang=en

http://www.consilium.europa.eu/homepage?lang=en

http://ec.europa.eu/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kazakhstan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kazakhstan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kyrgyzstan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/kyrgyzstan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/tajikistan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/tajikistan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/uzbekistan/index_en.htm

http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/uzbekistan/index_en.htm

http://www.eeas.europa.eu

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/eurostat/home

http://www.freedomhouse.org

http://www.hrw.org

http://www.oecd.org

http://www.oecd.org

http://www.eia.gov

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.001192

Index

ADB, 34Afghanistan, 8, 18, 49, 56, 57,

59, 69Akayev, Askar, 22Algieri, Franco, 73Armenia, 22, 37, 61Ashton, Catherine, 6, 49assistance

financial, 35technical, 4, 16, 18, 21, 25, 26,

27, 28, 30, 32, 38, 39, 46, 60, 68, 70, 78

attraction, 4, 10, 52, 69Austria, 51authoritarianism, 22, 23, 46autocracy, 19Axyonova, Vera, 47Azerbaijan, 37, 54, 61

Baku, 53

Baku Initiative, 52, 53Balkans

Eurasian, 55Western, 7, 37, 47, 70

Barroso, José Manuel, 2, 12Belarus, 7, 8, 13, 22, 27, 37,

41, 61BOMCA, 27, 56, 57, 66Boonstra, Jos, 49, 59, 74Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 55Bulgaria, 51Bush, George W., 3, 18, 55

CADAP, 27Canada, 23CAREN, 28Carter, Jimmy, 55Caspian (Sea), 51, 64Caucasus, South, 19, 24, 43,

61, 70CBRN, 58, 66Central Asia Invest, 28Charter of Paris for a New

Europe, 20, 24, 37Checkel, Jeffrey T., 70China, 6, 7, 8, 13, 32, 40, 43, 51,

53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 61, 65, 66, 67, 69, 72, 74, 75, 76

Beijing, 54, 59Xinjiang, 53

CIS, 25, 26, 75civil society, 20, 22, 23, 27, 46,

47, 48, 50Clinton, Hillary R., 5coercion, 70, 72Collins, Kathleen, 59Commission, European, 2, 8,

12, 14, 38, 39, 56, 62, 66, 80conditionality, strong, 26, 27, 35conditionality, weak, 26constructivism, 5, 28contagion, 4, 15co-operation

economic, 16, 18, 28, 30, 32, 68, 70, 71


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93Index

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0011

political, 30, 46scientific, 7technical, 27

CouncilEuropean, 2, 43, 67, 75, 80of the European Union, 22, 25, 26,

27, 38, 39, 53, 57, 58, 60, 65, 66, 67, 80

Crawford, Gordon, 49CSTO, 59Czech Republic, 51

Damro, Chad, 4Davis, Patricia, 27DCI, 38, 45, 61, 62Delcour, Laure, 17democracy, 2, 5, 6, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22,

23, 26, 28, 36, 42, 44, 45, 48, 50, 55, 59, 60, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73

democratisation, 19, 22Denisson, Susi, 59Denmark, 6dependence, energy, 7, 51Diez, Thomas, 5diffusion

informational, 4, 15, 46overt, 4procedural, 4, 21, 27, 30, 35, 46, 52

Dimitrova, Antoaneta, 72diversification, economic, 32Dombrowski, Peter, 27Dragneva, Rilka, 72Duchêne, François, 3

EBRD, 34EEAS, 13, 60effectiveness (of normative power), 8,

9, 15, 18, 44, 48, 71, 72, 73EIDHR, 38, 45energy, 7, 8, 18, 42, 43, 44, 50, 51, 52, 53,

54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 68, 70, 72

Energy Charter Treaty, 52, 53, 64, 71enforcement

of law, 79, 80of norms, 34

Erasmus Mundus, 27, 39Estonia, 17, 51EU/Belgium

Brussels, 17, 21, 23, 27, 46, 49, 50, 55, 58, 59, 80

EUCAM, 14, 49, 62, 63, 65, 67, 76Eurasia, 8, 24, 52, 55, 61Europe, Eastern, 17, 24, 38, 43, 61, 70European Energy Charter, 52, 64extremism, 56, 58, 81

Ferrero-Waldner, Benita, 6filter, cultural, 4, 15Finland, 6, 51Finon, Dominique, 54France, 51, 62, 66Freedom House, 22, 36, 37Fukuyama, Francis, 18

Game, New Great, 8gas, natural, 7geopolitics, 8, 14, 50George, Julie A., 17Georgia, 22Germany, 6, 43, 48, 49, 51, 62, 63, 64, 66

Berlin, 43, 49, 51governance, good, 44, 45, 47, 50, 60, 74Grant, Charles, 69Greece, 51Gross, Eva, 59Geeraerts, 59

Haerpfer, Christian W., 21Haine, Jean-Yves, 74Hale, Jacqueline, 69harmonisation, legal, 31Helsinki Final Act, 20Hill, Christopher, 70history, end of, 18Hoffmann, Katharina, 49human rights dialogue, 46Human Rights Watch, 22, 36, 37Hyde-Price, Adrian, 4

idealism, 44, 45IfS, 58, 66


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94 Index

DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0011

India, 7, 8, 13, 69, 76INOGATE, 27, 52, 65Iran, 8, 61Iraq, 56, 61, 66, 69ISAF, 49, 59Islam. Shafiqul, 29

Jagland, Thorbjørn, 2Japan, 28Judah, Ben, 73

Karimov, Islam, 23, 65Katzenstein, Peter J., 11, 70, 82Kavalski, Emilian, 72, 73Kazakhstan, 7, 14, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25,

28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 71, 74, 79, 80

Almaty, 58Astana, 21, 32, 40, 41, 47, 48, 53, 54,

61, 62, 63, 65Kobzova, Jana, 73Kortunov, Andrei, 29Kosovo, 7, 12, 37Kozlov, Vladimir, 47Kozyrev, Andrei, 29, 39Krastev, Ivan, 69Kreutz, Joakim, 27Kubicek, Paul, 19Kyrgyzstan, 7, 17, 20, 21, 22, 29, 30, 31,

33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 53, 58, 64, 67, 71, 79, 80

Bishkek, 21, 22, 39, 62, 67

Laruelle, Marlène, 58Latvia, 51Lavenex, Sandra, 8law, international, 20, 56, 57, 78law, rule of, 6, 20, 23, 43, 44, 45, 55, 60,

63, 78Leonard, Mark, 69Lewis, David, 73liberalisation (of trade), 32, 34Lithuania, 51Lubbers, Ruud, 52

Manners, Ian, 3, 5, 9, 10, 30, 70, 82Mansfield, Edward D., 19market economy, 20, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32,

34, 45Matlary, Janne H., 73Matveeva, Anna, 43McFaul, Michael, 19measures, appropriate, 23, 26, 27Melvin, Neil, 59, 74Moldova, 13, 21, 22, 37, 61Mongolia, 24, 37, 38, 61Monnet, Jean, 3Montenegro, 8, 37most-favoured-nation (clause), 31MPE (Market Power Europe), 4, 11, 82Murphy, Jonathan, 19

nation-state, 4, 10, 44, 49, 69, 82NATO, 8, 39, 49Nazarbayev, Nursultan, 48, 62, 65Neighbourhood Policy, European, 6,

7, 38,Netherlands, 6, 48

Hague, 52Nossel, Suzanne, 5NPE, 1, 3, 4, 9, 14, 15, 18, 23, 26, 27, 28,

30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 44, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74

NSLA, 45, 61Nye, Joseph S., 3, 5, 15

OECD, 34, 71Oettinger, Günther H., 54oil, 17, 27, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 64Orbie, Jan, 3OSCE, 58, 66, 71, 72, 73, 74, 78

Panebianco, Stefania, 72Parliament, European, 2, 17, 22, 31, 37,

63, 67partnership and co-operation

agreement, 16, 20, 21, 23, 31, 36, 40, 50, 63, 64

Path to Europe (programme), 32, 41, 48patrimonialism, 68, 72


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0011

PCA. See partnership and co-operation agreement

PEEREA, 52persuasion, 3, 47, 56, 69, 70Petersen, Alexandros, 55pipeline, Central Asia-China, 54pipeline, Trans-Caspian, 54Poland, 51, 66Popescu, Nicu, 73power

bargaining, 23, 35, 72civilian, 3hard, 4, 5, 7, 10, 14, 30, 42, 51, 57, 59,

60, 69, 70, 72military, 3, 4, 5, 8, 49, 56, 59, 61, 70normative, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 21,

30, 35, 49, 52, 56, 68, 69, 70, 71, 74smart, 5, 6, 15, 68soft, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 34, 69

practices, best, 34, 35, 47, 57, 71Putin, Vladimir, 18

realism, 4reform

liberal, 35market, 26, 34political, 45social, 31

Regional Assistance Strategy for Central Asia, 28, 78

Rice, Condoleezza, 5rights, human, 2, 5, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23,

26, 27, 28, 35, 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 57, 59, 60, 63, 68, 70, 71, 73, 78, 79, 80

Rompuy, Herman Van, 2, 5Rose, Richard, 19rule

adoption, 71application, 8, 28, 32, 48, 60, 71selection, 8, 18, 28, 32, 44, 48, 70

Rule of Law Initiative, 47, 57Russia, 6, 7, 8, 13, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24, 29,

30, 32, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 69, 72, 74, 75

Moscow, 7, 17, 24, 29, 39, 51, 58, 59, 64, 69, 73

Schatz, Edward, 74Schimmelfennig, Frank, 8, 48, 72Schmitz, Andrea, 49SCO, 59security, 8, 14, 18, 23, 42, 43, 44, 50, 52,

55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 79, 80

energy, 52, 53Serbia, 7, 8, 12, 37Shin, Don Chull, 19Sjursen, Helene, 4Slovakia, 51Slovenia, 51Smith, Michael E., 73Snyder, Jack, 19South Africa, 61, 69South Korea, 8Soviet Union, 7, 10, 17, 18, 24, 25, 28, 34,

36, 38, 45, 50, 52, 55, 61Spinoza, Baruch, 2stability, 7, 8, 18, 45, 46, 53, 55, 56, 57,

58, 60Steinmeier, Franck-Walter, 43strategy for Central Asia (2007), 9, 14,

27, 32, 40, 42, 43, 47, 50, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 76, 80

Sweden, 51

TACIS, 24, 25, 26, 27, 37, 38, 45, 46, 61

Tajikistan, 7, 17, 20, 25, 29, 30, 33, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 51, 64, 67, 71, 79

Dushanbe, 39, 51, 60, 67Taliban, 18, 59Tempus, 27terrorism, 56, 57, 58, 81TRACECA, 27trade. See co-operation, economictrafficking (of drugs), 57, 58, 81transference, 4, 15, 27, 35, 46, 52, 57,

58, 60Traynor, Ian, 73Tulip Revolution, 22


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DOI: 10.1057/9781137443946.0011

Turkey, 8, 23Turkmenistan, 7, 17, 22, 25, 29, 30, 31,

33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 64, 65, 71, 79

Ashgabat, 51, 65

UK, 48, 66London, 3, 11, 13, 35, 36, 67, 74, 75, 82

Ukraine, 7, 8, 13, 21, 22, 37, 38, 61, 62, 72, 75

Kyiv, 64, 72UNDP, 48, 56United Nations Charter, 20United States, 3

Washington, 11, 13, 34, 59, 64, 75, 76, 82

US Energy Information Administration, 50, 64

USAID, 28USSR. See Soviet Union

Uzbekistan, 7, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 46, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 63, 64, 65, 71, 74, 78, 79

Andijan, 23, 49Tashkent, 21, 22, 37, 49, 63, 65Termez, 49

Vaïsse, Justin, 59

War, Cold, 3, 17, 18, 24Warkotsch, Alexander, 17, 72Wendt, Alexander, 11, 28, 82World Bank, 28, 29, 34, 39, 41WTO, 32, 34, 41, 71

Yeltsin, Boris, 29Yenikeyeff, Shamil, 54Youngs, Richard, 23

Zhovtis, Yevgeny, 46, 62


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