EU-LISTCO newsletter with insightful analysis, latest news, and events.

February, 2020 | NEWSLETTER 4

Greetings! Welcome to EU-LISTCO’s Fourth Newsletter, which focuses on the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood.

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In this issue

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NOTCHING UP RESILIENCE IN EUROPE’S EAST

On February 20, 2020, buses taking Ukrainian evacuees to a health spa in the region of Poltava was attacked. The evacuees had been flown back to their country from China. The health ministry was preparing to place them in quarantine for fourteen days.

But dozens of protestors attacked the buses. The reason? Ukraine’s security service said a fake email claimed that the evacuees had contracted the coronavirus. That rumour sparked the protest. It was as if the protestors had no faith in their own health system, that the quarantine period would not be strictly observed, that they didn’t trust or believe the authorities. Whatever the reason, they became easy targets of disinformation.

That same day, the United States, Britain, and NATO accused Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU, of a big cyber attack that took place against Georgia in October 2019. The attack took down websites and interrupted television broadcasts.

“This action contradicts Russia’s attempts to claim it is a responsible actor in cyberspace and demonstrates a continuing pattern of reckless Russian GRU cyber operations against a number of countries,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. “These operations aim to sow division, create insecurity, and undermine democratic institutions.”

The two cases couldn’t be more different—at least on paper—but they seem to have one thing in common: the lack of resilience.

Borders can’t stop cyber attacks or the flow of disinformation or the spread of fake news via social media. But strong and accountable state institutions underpinned by resilience can play a major role fending off such attacks. Countries such as Georgia and Ukraine that are still in the process of building strong democratic institutions are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks and fake news.

Democracies can take countermeasures. They have at their disposal experts, intelligence agencies, whistleblowers, and officials who either try to anticipate such attacks or, when they happen, trace their origin. And these agencies share information with their counterparts in other countries.

Such attacks are not confined to bringing down the internet. They can cause havoc by breaking into energy grids, health and bank data systems, not to mention the disruption caused through social media. That is why the countries straddling the European Union’s Eastern borders need as much support as possible to boost resilience.

Resilience and democracy are not mutually exclusive. They are complementary. These two elements need to be strengthened in Europe’s Eastern neighbourhood, which includes the countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Each in its own way has contested borders or limited statehood. Each in its own way is subject to meddling by Russia. And each in its own way has aspirations to become much closer with the EU, even join it, or to join NATO or have at least a closer security relationship with either NATO or the United States. It is about having a perspective and having reassurance.

Above all, it is about the EU and NATO recognizing that stability and security in Europe depends on its neighbours making the complex and difficult transition to democracy.

The protestors’ attack against the evacuees in Ukraine and the cyber attacks against Georgia are symptomatic of this challenge of transformation. Having the tools to fight disinformation, fake news, and cyber attacks takes time and effort for these countries—and also for democracies.

The role of strong and accountable state institutions and civil society are crucial elements in this transition. And so is trust in those state institutions. If they cannot provide these qualities, the EU’s Eastern neighbourhood will remain vulnerable. This is not in the interests of the EU or the citizens of this part of Europe.

—Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Europe Foundation

	LATEST PUBLICATIONS

Working paper

Researching Resilience: Implications for Case Studies in Europe’s Neighbourhoods

David Cadier, Matteo Capasso, and Karoline Eickhoff

Drawing on EULISTCO’s conceptual framework, this paper defines the analytical category of resilience and provides a roadmap to study its characteristics in configurations of areas of limited statehood and contested orders.

Working paper

Does Resilience Permeate Foreign Policy? A Review of the Instruments of the EU, Germany, France, and Italy

Pol Bargués-Pedreny, Aurora Bergmaier, Federica Bicchi, Amelie Buchwald, Karoline Eickhoff, Pol Morillas, Gabriella Sanchez, and Anna Schmauder

This paper explores how the idea of resilience has made its way into the external action of the European Union and selected member states as a means to address areas of limited statehood and contested orders.

Policy Paper

Stability vs. Democracy in the Post Arab-Spring: What Choice For the EU?

Khalil Shikaki

The EU should seek to strengthen societal resilience by supporting democratic reforms in its Southern neighborhood. Such support should be guided by local priorities that address the economic, political, educational, and health needs of the Arab public.

Blog Post

How to Predict Violent Conflict in Mali and Ukraine

Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Siri Aas Rustad, Andreas Forø Tollefsen, and Jonas Vestby

By using state-of-the-art early-warning models, the recent outbreaks of deadly violence in Mali and Ukraine could probably have been predicted.

Blog Post

The Hopes and Frustrated Expectations of COP25

Pol Bargués-Pedreny

For most policymakers and experts who took part in the 2019 UN Climate Conference, the summit’s outcomes are insufficient. The protesters and critics who followed the summit from outside are even more frustrated.

Blog Post

Georgia’s Dangerous Slide Away From Democracy

Kornely Kakachia, Bidzina Lebanidze

The EU should help Georgia overcome its latest political crisis and invest in the further democratization and stability of the wider region.

Blog Post

Why Democracy Couldn’t Prevent Radicalization in Tunisia

Georges Fahmi

Tunisia’s transition to democracy has not prevented a wave of violent extremism. Radical jihadist ideas and socioeconomic frustrations are still present in society and must be tackled.

Country Report

Mali Country Report

William G. Nomikos

This report details the unique challenges posed to the external action of the EU and its member states by Mali, a land-locked country in West Africa spanning mountainous, desert, and tropical terrains.

Country Report

Libya Country Report

Matteo Capasso, Jędrzej Czerep, Andrea Dessì, Gabriella Sanchez

Libya is a country located in the western region of North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Algeria and Tunisia to the west, Chad and Niger to the south, Sudan to the south-east and Egypt to the east.

Country Report

Ukraine Country Report

Maxim Boroda, Maksym Bugriy, Agnieszka Legucka, Daniel Szeligowski

Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe and has the longest land border with the EU. The country’s security is crucial to the stability of Europe, as well as EU–Russia relations.

	Quick Takes

Judy Dempsey asked EU-LISTCO researchers: Is the Eastern Neighbourhood Permanent?

Ahead of the EU-LISTCO Eastern Neighbourhood Regional Forum, which is being held in Kyiv on March 17, respondents discuss: Will the region be permanently excluded from the EU or from NATO? Will it be constantly under pressure from Russia? Will it be permanently in transition—and to what? Will it be a region with its own permanent identity?

Maksym Boroda, Ukrainian Institute for Public Policy (UIPP)

Over a decade ago, when it launched the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the EU’s goal was to build “a common area of shared democracy, prosperity, stability and increased cooperation.”

Ironically, in 2020 there appears to be less democracy, less prosperity, less stability, and less cooperation both within the EU and within its neighbourhood.

However, three out of the six EaP countries—Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine—have clearly outgrown the current version of the neighbourhood policy by obtaining its major perks. These include the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) and a visa-free regime with the EU.

Not having much else to offer for one half of the EaP countries and not being able to deliver anything in particular for the other half, it looks like the EaP may have approached a status of hibernation.

This sleep mode is likely to last until some of the EaP countries in fact become more democratic, prosperous, and stable and thus more acceptable for further rapprochement with the EU. Until (and if) this happens, shifting acronyms in the EU policies and programmes towards the region will hardly bring it closer to the EU.

Tanja Börzel and Thomas Risse, Freie Universität Berlin

The Eastern neighbourhood is part of Europe. Therefore, it cannot be permanent. The EU Association Agreements with Georgia and Ukraine acknowledge the European aspirations of both countries, while leaving “open the way for future progressive developments” in the relationship, with EU membership as its anchor.

Georgia in particular is meticulously implementing the provisions of its agreements with the EU. The EU, in contrast, has been extremely reluctant and has even been backtracking from providing a membership perspective. One can only hope that the new European Commission takes its own aspirations for a more active European foreign policy seriously.

Both European values and geostrategic reasons call for a closer relationship between the EU and its Eastern neighbourhood, particularly Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Supporting their democratic transition requires an explicit membership perspective, as distant as it may be!

David Cadier, Sciences Po

No. The “Eastern Neighbourhood” is a policy template more than a geographic coordinate. It’s a political subjectivity more than a political reality. Policies and political subjectivities are not fixed, but constructed, contextual, and contingent. In the 1990s, the term “Central Europe” very much represented a political project for countries like the Czech Republic or Hungary.

The term “Eastern Neighbourhood” refers to a group of countries recipient of the same policy. Through the European Neighbourhood Policy, the EU offers economic integration and political association.

More profoundly, the policy is a platform for European structural power. It’s an attempt to export EU rules, norms, and standards, which find its limits when confronted with contested orders and areas of limited statehood.

Russia opted out of this policy from the beginning and, as such, has chosen not to be in the Eastern neighbourhood. Instead, it has pursued its own geopolitical and geoeconomic agendas in the region.

The fact that the region is most often designated in reference to other powers (“in-between”) and to their policies (“Eastern Neighbourhood” versus “Near Abroad”), or to something they are not anymore (“post-Soviet”), testifies that its political identity is more indeterminate, manifold, contested, or unavailable than permanent.

Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Europe Foundation

No one ever likes to be defined merely as a neighbour to someone else. The curious position of the six countries of the Eastern Partnership is that they are double neighbours, both of Russia and of the European Union. In the case of the three South Caucasus countries—Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia—you can add in Iran and Turkey as well. Too often they are still defined by the big powers around them.

This is not exactly new. But the three Baltic states offer a useful comparison. They used to be a perpetual borderland but have become core European states. It’s often forgotten that the Baltic trio were not initial candidates to be part of the wave of EU enlargement of 2004, but made the case in Brussels by an impressive spurt of domestic reform. Now, Estonia’s GDP per capita is over €21,000, while Ukraine’s is €2,800 (about the same as Angola’s).

You can blame Russia of course, but the Estonians also had a Russia problem. This is about a concerted effort of the political class to build a modern state with rule of law and institutions. If you start here, all the other issues—neighbourhood, alliances, belonging—follow on behind.

Kornely Kakachia, Georgian Institute of Politics

I think, first of all, that we have to start with the question of whether the EaP is coherent, functions in a genuinely sustainable region, or is an artificial creation promoted by the EU.

At the moment, there is no consensus in the EU on how to define the region and on what its proper identity should be within the European context.

While for many observers in the region it is “New Eastern Europe,” in the West an old narrative that splits the EaP between Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus still prevails. To make matters worse, we often hear from pundits that the region is a “land between EU and Russia” and “a grey zone,” and that its countries are “security orphans.” These descriptions don’t hold water.

The definition difficulties are also related to the fact that none of the EaP leaders—or Western leaders for that matter—have a strategic vision for the future of the region and its place in the European security architecture. While being under permanent pressure from Russia, who sees this part of the world as its own backyard, the region is undergoing a difficult transition.

Since the EU lacks strategic vision, it wants to keep the region in positive ambiguity without offering any European perspectives. This is an unsustainable scenario. It also undermines NATO membership perspectives for Ukraine and Georgia. In short, Europe needs a clear EaP strategy and Brussels needs to shape it.

Agnieszka Legucka and Daniel Szeligowski, Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM)

Not at all. While former European Commission president Romano Prodi once famously named the EU neighbourhood “a ring of friends,” in 2014 the Economist called it “a ring of fire.” This clearly proves that nothing is permanent, let alone the situation in the EU’s east.

In the Eastern Neighbourhood, the Russian aggression against Ukraine finally awoke many Western decisionmakers to the reality that the EU’s vision of a common neighbourhood, shared peacefully with Russia, had only been a dream of the past.

Russia will push further in its attempt to reassert itself in the region, whether we like it or not. At the same time, the EU’s Eastern neighbours have been making their own sovereign choices. Some of them are seeking even closer ties with the EU and will finally knock on the EU’s (“heaven’s”) door. Just look at Ukraine, whose population has never been more pro-European than now. And do not forget about China, whose influence has been steadily growing in the EU’s east. In this context, the Eastern Neighbourhood is only temporary.

	RECENT EVENTS

Public Event

What’s in It for Us? The EU and Georgia’s Membership Perspective

Freie Universität Berlin

The Freie Universität Berlin, in collaboration with the Georgia Embassy in Berlin and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, hosted a public debate on the future of EU-Georgian relations from a multi-perspective approach.

Public Event

Donbas Five Years After the Minsk Agreements

Polish Institute of International Affairs

The Polish Institute of International Affairs hosted a public debate and workshop on Donbas as a case of limited statehood in Europe’s Eastern neighbourhood.

Public Event

Hybrid Governance and Limited Statehood in the MENA Region

European University Institute

The European University Institute hosted a two-day event on how limited statehood and contestation have affected forms of governance in the Middle East and North Africa.

Public Event

How to Foster Societal Resilience in the Eastern Partnership Countries

Georgian Institute of Politics

The Georgian Institute of Politics hosted a public lecture and a roundtable discussion to dissect the risks coming from contestations of the liberal international order, and to discuss ways to foster social resilience in the Eastern Partnership countries.

Public Event

EU-LISTCO Midterm Conference

Bilkent University

The EU-LISTCO Midterm Conference, hosted by Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, provided an opportunity for consortium partners to enhance knowledge exchange and strengthen collaboration for the upcoming months of the project.