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EU: Russia (EUC Report)

First, I should make it clear that this report was very much put together under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Roper last year. Certainly, his strong work moved on from the original Russia report of May 2008, which came up with similar conclusions. There are no contradictions, but clearly events in Russia moved on quickly. The Russia-EU relationship and the issues discussed in this report are ever current. During the past week, we have had the NATO manoeuvres, a suspected mutiny of the tank corps in Georgia and strong language yet again between Georgia and Russia, with NATO interventions as well. We have had recent conferences about energy and pipelines and, of course, we have all the implications on Russia’s economy of the worldwide credit crunch and financial crisis. This report is very much as alive and active today as when it was written. No doubt we could write another one, although we will resist the temptation, in a few months’ time. The report concentrates on the war—indeed, that is what it was—between Georgia and Russia. The committee was clear that responsibility for the war was shared by all the parties. Indeed, we said that, ""responsibility for the conflict was shared, in differing measures, by all the parties"." However, we felt strongly that the force used by Russia and its forces was entirely disproportionate, although we completely agreed that there were a number of provocative statements and other actions by Georgia’s President Saakashvili. I was interested that the Government’s response to the report also described Georgia’s actions as "reckless" in this regard. The committee would very much agree with that. Where we differed from the Government was that we felt that there were mixed signals to Georgia from the United States Administration, who had perhaps given the Georgian Administration overconfidence in trying to reclaim parts of South Ossetia. We believed that those signals were reckless and that the unfortunate consequences of the war that followed were very much shared by both sides. However, we cannot get away from the fact that the Russian response to whatever the Georgian provocations were was entirely disproportionate. We must keep that in mind as we consider the rest of the areas that this report covers. The committee felt that the ceasefire was an issue on which the European Union had been particularly successful. Perhaps that was due to a strong presidency at the time. The actions of President Sarkozy were immediate. He was able to talk directly to President Medvedev of the Russian Federation and, through that, there was a ceasefire relatively quickly, there was a withdrawal at the time, even though it was not perfect, and there were talks in Geneva. We say in the report that that illustrated that this was an area in which the European Union, perhaps alone in this conflict, was able to intervene successfully and prevent this major conflict from becoming worse. However, post-ceasefire, we have a number of concerns, particularly over non-compliance by the Russian Federation and the limited access given to the EU monitoring mission to Georgia. We would be interested to hear from the Minister an update on the monitoring force and, most of all, on the fact that Russia has continued to occupy South Ossetia and Abkhazia with not just observation forces but other forces and has recognised them as independent sovereign states. We see that as regrettable and something that needs to be solved; the position needs to move back. Some of us in the committee commented that it is even more important now for the European Union to explain and maintain its position on Kosovo and to say why that recognition is not in conflict with our position on South Ossetia and Abkhazia. On the Russian Federation more broadly in this conflict, one area of special concern to the committee was that of passports being issued outside the federation to new Russian citizens. We felt—and some of our evidence showed—that this practice was quite substantial. It may not be a problem in its own right and it is clearly within the sovereign right of a nation state, but we felt that, when tied in with the Medvedev doctrine of protecting the life and dignity of Russian citizens wherever they are, it produces a particularly dangerous combination for the future and is a signal that Russia would consider intervening in other nation states where it felt that such protection was necessary. We felt that that was a new and dangerous step to take, particularly in relation to the Caucasus and Russia’s near abroad. On the economy, issues have arisen because of the fall in the price of oil, but again the committee felt strongly that the European Union should continue to encourage full integration of the Russian economy into a global setting and support its moves with regard to the World Trade Organisation. We have also to consider the energy question. The committee looked at the second crisis that came along this winter in the Ukraine. We felt that the EU, frankly, did not apply the lessons learnt from the problems that arose in 2006. Indeed, the report describes this quite distinctly as a policy failure. Certainly the Russian Federation, when it turned off energy supplies to the Ukraine, seemed to have no regard to the response of the European Union and the effect on eastern and southern Europe in particular. There was no European influence at all; the presidency has not been effective in this area. The committee calls for a unified European energy strategy as a matter of key importance in our energy relations with Russia. We believe that the Nabucco pipeline and other ways of bypassing Russian influence over energy supplies to eastern Europe are important considerations. I know that there have been conferences on this recently and I would be interested to hear from the Minister where the Government feel that Europe is going in this area. The crisis was started because Russia was very sensitive about the agreement that Georgia and Ukraine could apply to join NATO. In considering this, the committee felt that maybe this was not the most important thing to pursue in the short term. In military areas, the emphasis should be on practical co-operation between NATO and those two states. We felt that the NATO decision added to bad feeling between Georgia and Russia and was not helpful towards resolving problems in the short term. However, the committee welcomed the Eastern Partnership, launched by the Czech presidency. It is a good policy tool with which to work with Georgia, Ukraine and the other eastern states, because European Union membership is something that should be actively pursued over time. Overall, as the Obama Administration might have said, the committee has not pushed the reset button. In fact, the relationship between the EU and Russia needs to remain hard-headed, pragmatic and unsentimental. We should continue to strive for a partnership and co-operation agreement, but it needs to be made on a different basis according to a new agenda and should include issues such as counter-proliferation and climate change. There is also a great need to try to unfreeze those frozen conflicts that are bound to unfreeze themselves in a hostile way if they are not solved diplomatically. Obviously, Moldova is part of that. Russia is clearly an important neighbour and one of the major European powers. It does not always play by the rules that the European Union would like it to play by—indeed, Europe has been pressed and divided more by Russia’s actions than by actions in other parts of the world—and it very much challenges European unity. Our conclusion is that there needs to be a pragmatic relationship and that Europe needs to be much more unified and hard-headed.