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  The European Union's new constitution defines rather clearly what are the values that a European country should subscribe to: "respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and human rights." In economic policy Europe aims at a state where "competition is free and undistorted".
  How well does Russia fit into this definition? Let me focus on three key areas: liberty and democracy; rule of law; and economic freedom. Lets begin with political freedom. Freedom House is a respected and widely cited source ranks countries according to political rights and civil liberties. Currently Freedom House ranks Russia as a "partially free country" with a grade of 5 (1 being the best and 7 the worst), on both political and civil liberties, with only half a point in both categories separating Russia from the status on an "unfree" country. The other countries in the same category with Russia are Bahrain, Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, and Uganda. (Source: Freedom in the World 2004: Map of Freedom)
  Freedom House provides a long list of violations of the rules of the game of liberal democracy in Russia, a list familiar to everyone from other sources as well. Military and security officials continue to be appointed to key government and legislative positions. Businessmen that have not accepted Putin's autocractic hold on power have been forced to move from the country. The last free nationwide tv-network has been taken over by the government. Widespread violations of human righs in Chechnya continue. Supporters and financers of opposition parties have been harassed and jailed and their offices have been raided. Prominent liberals have been assassinated. The country's richest man and most important financer backer of liberals forces is in jail and the future of his company's, Yukos, is in the hands of the government. After the tragedy in Beslan, the centralization of power in Russia has been accelerated, with the last traces of regional self-government crushed by the Kremlin.
  All of this has lead to a situation where the future of Russia as normal democratic country is increasingly questioned. Freedom House concludes in its recent report: "There are growing questions whether Russians can change their government democratically, particularly in light of the state's far-reaching control of broadcast media and growing harassment of opposition parties and their financial backers." How about the rule of law, another key aspect of a country's normalcy and Europeanness? Here Transparency International provides the commonly accepted source for comparing countries. In the most recent rankings, Russia ranks behind countries such as Mongolia and Iran, and receives a score identical with Gambia, Tanzania and Mosambique. In Transparency's International Bribe Payer's Index, Russia ranks as the worst among the 21 countries studied.
  Moving onto economic freedom, Russia's progress seems equally unimpressive. Despite the oil-fueled economic growth of the last few years, the Russian economy remains far behind the West in actual implementation of economic freedom. The Heritage/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom helps put Russia's performance in context.
  Whereas Western countries (plus Hong Kong and Singapore) score the highest in the implementation of economic freedom, Russia ranks as 114th, just behind Niger, Benin and Malawi, as a "mostly unfree" country in the index. (Source: Heritage Foundation / Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom)
  What these figures suggest is that Russia is far from the kind of normal European country that Putin claims it to be.15 If one sees the march towards ever more perfect representative democracy, transparency of governance, and economic freedom as a never-ending competition, it looks like Russia will need a bit of help from the West if it is to succeed in achieving the grand goal of ranking aside European countries. If left on its own, there seems to be little cause to expect a miraculous rise of political liberty, transparency of government, and economic freedom in Russia.
 
  A Potential Great Power?
  The two great centers of economic power in today's international system are the US Europe, both with a GDP of approximately 11 trillion dollars, with South-East Asia having the potential to become the third pillar of the world economy in the coming years and decades. It is clear that at the moment, Russia with a GDP around one-tenth of EU, is not in the same league with the three main centres of gravity in the world economy, although Russia's role as an oil-producer raises its political importance somewhat above other similar-size economies.
  The disparity in economic power between the West and Russia is reflected in military budgets as well. Russia's military budget in real terms is about one tenth of NATO's (in figures that do not take purchasing power parity into question, the difference is considerably larger). The West is clearly the hegemonic military actor in Western Eurasia, and looks set to remain so for as long as one can see. Even a transatlantic divorce in the coming decades would not danger the EU's leadership role in Western Eurasia. Europe would have the economic power to bear that responsibility. West also has geostrategic advantages that will enable it to focus procurement for force projection more efficiently than Russia. Russia is a continental power with long borders with the West, the unstable areas of the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Asian part of Russia is part of the geostrategic problematique revolving around the rise of China. Europe, in turn, is secure on the Western side, while the US can still count on its traditional four most reliable allies - the Atlantic, the Pacific, Mexico and Canada - although terrorism has given homeland security a new dimension.
  How about long-term scenarios? Could an economically booming, politically stable Russia catch up with Europe sometime in the future? The answer is simple: Take the following figures. Russia's fertility rate currently is around 1.1-1.2. and the UN estimates that Russia's population will fall from its current 146 Million into approximately 100 million people around 2050. In comparison, the US fertility rates are around 2.1, which, combined with an active immigration policy, will take the American population to somewhere between 400 million and 500 million (some experts give even higher figures) by 2050. Europe's (current and forthcoming members of the EU) population will, according to the UN, decrease from the current 481 million to somewhere around 424 million in 2050 - a serious decline but still modest compared to the dramatic fall in Russia.
  The real demographic center of gravity in the world will remain Asia, which will grow from its current 3,8 billion to 5,2 billion inhabitants.20 This means that mere growth in the total population of Asia between now and 2050 will equal to about 14 times the total Russian population in 2050.
  In sum, the big structural changes we will be likely to see in the coming decades in international politics, will in all likelihood be related to the rise of Asia (China followed, quite possibly by India), into the ranks of US and Europe among the great centers of economic and political power in the world, with possible turbulence over the Atlantic as the West struggles to deal with the reality of European unity, and the pressures that being a hegemon puts on America.
  There is every reason to conclude that Russia will remain a rather insignificant player in the global power game. Russia's demographic, economic and geostrategic weaknesses mean that Russia will never be in a position to compete with the US, Europe or Asia. Energy companies operating in Russia will make good money by servicing the three main centers of activity in the global system, but the Russian leadership's hands will be tied by the political challenge of holding together the country, engaging in damage limitation as the population shrinks, and modernizing the aging infrastructure of the country.
 
  Seven Steps to Freedom: How to Promote Democracy in Russia
  With the vision of Russia as a "normal European country" and a potential great power being so detached from reality, what kind of a positive vision can we offer for Russia?
  Let me first give the reason for being optimistic. Despite the setbacks in Russia's democratization-process over the last few year, the megatrend towards liberal democracy in Europe and Russia is likely to continue. As shown in the figure below, the trend towards greater democracy in Western Eurasia is clear and strong. I believe it is likely that this trend will continue in the coming decades. Indeed, the Soviet empire can in hindsight be seen like dam that held the water of a river for several decades, and once the dam started eroding, the natural course of history resumed. Rivers flow downstream, humans strive for freedom from arbitrary misuse of power. Putin can attempt to build another small dam around his country, but he cannot turn the course of history.
  When historians fifty years from now will look at a similar chart that continues up to their day, it is likely that a any possible decrease in the number of democracies (or, more likely, a small drop in Russia's democraticness score) will be seen as a temporary dip in an overall upward trend, and that all European countries, including Russia, will have become consolidated liberal democracies. The setbacks in Russia's evolution in recent years will probably be seen as part of the growing-up process of the Russia people, as they slowly let go of the idea of a strong state and a strong leader, and internalize the virtues of liberal democracy, republican governance and economic freedom.
  Let me suggest seven concrete steps on how to prevent new dams or dividing lines from appearing between Russia and the West:
  1) Forge a transatlantic political consensus on the importance of Russia's democratization. Little will happen if the EU and the US have differing views on how to proceed, or start following policies that contradict each other. Stability, non-proliferation and a steady flow of energy are important, but not enough. We need a common understanding about why promoting democracy in Russia matters and we need a common strategy on how to do it. This will probably be the most difficult of the steps to take. The main Western powers have a more urgent political agenda on their table and those countries that do care about Russia's democratization are too small and weak to do get things moving by themselves. In theory, the European Union could play the role of a force multiplier for these small countries, in reality the EU's record for doing so in its Russia-policy is not all that impressive.
  2) Increase the financial backing for Russian liberal NGO's, media organizations, and think-tanks.22 The West should not be ashamed of being selective in its financial aid. It is not in the interest of Europe or the US to fund Russian civil society activity as such, or political science research as such, or creative new thinking on foreign policy as such. We are interested in activities that help foster a culture favorable to values defined in the EU's foreign policy documents and the European Union's draft Constitution (liberal democracy, rule of law, free markets) and the US National Security Strategy.
  3) Educate more Russian students in the field of social sciences, political science in particular. Free-thinking policy pundits, think-tankers, op-ed writers, and civil right advocates do not appear from thin air. They have to be educated. (And, who knows, maybe young Russians can help us understand a thing or two from ourselves as well.)
  4) Fight Russophobia in Europe, wherever it exists. The credibility of Europe's policy on Russia can be undermined if the experience of individual Russians is that Europe does not welcome them in the European family of nations. While Russophobia exists in many parts of Eastern Europe (some countries seem to be willing to close the doors once they have gotten into the club), prejudices towards Russians prevail in other places as well. For example, a Recent Gallup International study showed that 62% of Finns have a negative image about Russians. Getting this to change should be a priority for opinion leaders in Finland.
  5) Be honest in public evaluations of the progress in Russia's political culture. Finnish history provides good lessons on how not to fight prejudices towards Russians. For half a century, the Finnish elite told the Finnish public that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving country with an excellent relationship to our country. The present rather sad figures regarding Finnish Russophobia show that the Finnish public did not believe a word about the Finnish government's rhetoric on the topic. Trying to hide the current very real problems regarding Russia's democratization and the problems in EU-Russian relations would only perpetuate the existing perceptions. Getting the facts straight on the state of democracy in Russia would lift the burden from ordinary Russians in Europe, who have nothing at all to do with Putin's authoritarian policies and who now have to carry an unnecessary guilt for them.
  6) Promote visa-free travel. Economic interaction between Russia and Europe is a key element in the liberalization of Russian political culture. Economic interaction requires free movement of people. The present visa-regime between Europe and Russia is not ideal for this. Becoming the champion of visa-free travel between Russia and Europe (instead of being perceived as one of the main opponents of it) would be a noble signal to send from Helsinki to Moscow. Making visa-free travel conditional on real progress in Russia's democratization would not be too much to ask in return.
  7) Help design and maintain political institutions that support sound economic policies in Russia. The long-term danger for Russia is that the country will remain an oil-economy instead of gradually becoming a more diversified economy whose economic performance would not be so dependent on energy prices. There is a growing corpus of research on how to design political institutions that foster real economic growth.24 There is an increasing awareness among experts that political institutions and political culture really matters for economic performance and that privatization as such is not an answer to all problems. This literature has direct relevance for the case of Russia and could be used better by Europeans.
  Source: www.upi-fiia.fi
 
 ЕВРОПЕЙСКАЯ ПОЛИТИКА ДОБРОСОСЕДСТВА: СТРАТЕГИЯ ПРЕД-РАСШИРЕНИЯ ИЛИ ДЕМАРКАЦИЯ "ПРЕДЕЛОВ ЕВРОПЫ"?
 Аркадий Мошеc
 
 ЕЩЕ РАЗ О ПЛЮСАХ ЕВРОПЕЙСКОГО ВЫБОРА
 Россия в глобальной политике, N.4, 2005
 
  ЛОГИКА И ПОЛИТИКА
  Практически никто в российском экспертном сообществе не спорит сегодня с тем, что без максимально тесного взаимодействия с Европейским союзом социально-экономическое обновление и развитие России окажется чрезвычайно трудным, если вообще возможным, процессом. Большинство согласно и с тем, что Европа является наиболее естественным партнером России - прежде всего в силу общей культурной традиции, а также потому, что и сами россияне воспринимают себя в качестве европейцев. Таким образом, и "цивилизационный" - встраивание в наиболее успешное сообщество глобализирующегося мира, - и модернизационный императивы российской политики в целом вписываются в рамки так называемого европейского выбора.
  Однако логика европеизации перестает выглядеть убедительной, как только речь заходит о том, что реализация европейского выбора на практике означает вхождение в некое пространство с уже установившимися правилами игры, повлиять на которые Россия не сможет. Между тем принять их полностью означало бы навредить своим интересам. Более того, Россия может столкнуться с выдвижением неоправданных, несправедливых и откровенно унизительных требований в свой адрес. На основании этих в общем-то небеспочвенных опасений делается вывод о том, что интеграция в Европу приведет к утрате Россией влияния в мире и прилегающих регионах, ее превращению в государство второго ранга даже в континентальном масштабе.
  С тем чтобы избежать такого поворота событий, российская европейская политика концептуально нацелена на сохранение в отношениях с ЕС формата равноправного партнерства. А поскольку в полной мере это заведомо недостижимо из-за асимметрии в экономической мощи и в степени взаимной привлекательности социальных моделей (многие россияне хотели бы жить, "как в Европе", но не наоборот), практический курс сводится к сохранению свободы рук, отказу от принятия обязательств по приближению России к нормам ЕС, ставке на избирательное сотрудничество в тех немногих сферах, в которых ресурсы сторон пока сопоставимы (энергетика, безопасность).
  Примерно с конца 2002 года в двусторонних отношениях наметилось снижение планки взаимных ожиданий, что произошло в том числе и в результате осознанного отказа России встраивать собственную политико-правовую и экономическую систему в систему ЕС - именно так изначально понималась "гармонизация норм". Общая cтратегия Европейского союза в отношении России, содержавшая, несмотря на свой декларативный характер, перспективное видение России как элемента единой Европы, летом 2004-го утратила силу де-юре, а де-факто умерла годом ранее. В 2007 году истекает срок действия Соглашения о партнерстве и сотрудничестве (СПС) от 1994-го. Поскольку СПС полностью не выполнено, возможно, что его не заменит равный по статусу документ. На это Брюссель может не согласиться в случае, если сторонам не удастся ни преодолеть разногласия, ни договориться относительно степени юридической обязательности положений нового соглашения и механизма санкций за их неисполнение. Вполне возможно, что место СПС на неопределенный срок займут принятые в Москве в мае 2005-го "дорожные карты" по четырем "общим пространствам" - экономики; внешней безопасности; свободы, безопасности и правосудия; науки, образования и культуры. Как известно, эти договоренности крайне неконкретны, а ключевым понятием в них является слово "диалог".
  Процесс принял форму кольца Мёбиуса. Россия вроде бы выполняет СПС с его несомненным интеграционным потенциалом, а на деле вернулась к сотрудничеству с ЕС в отдельных, пусть и крупных проектах, то есть к концепции, с которой начинал СССР в эпоху Горбачёва. Стратегическое видение будущего двусторонних отношений так и не сформировано, а без этого, как подсказывает здравый смысл, стагнация, а то и регресс неизбежны.
  При этом нежелание Москвы идти по пути интеграции в Европу не сопровождается наращиванием ею внешнего влияния. Наоборот, Россия теряет позиции даже в ближайшем зарубежье. Скорее всего, без нового поворота российской политики в сторону Европы России следует ожидать дальнейшего сокращения своего международного ресурса. В целях сохранения своей роли в Европе и мире России следовало бы отказаться от статуса внешнего по отношению к ЕС игрока и сделать ставку на влияние на систему изнутри, как это делают другие ведущие европейские державы, и всерьез задуматься о принятии интеграционной парадигмы развития отношений с ЕС.
 
  СВОЙ - ЧУЖОЙ
  Системная, качественная утрата Россией своих позиций в Европе сегодня идет по двум относительно новым направлениям. Первое из них связано с формированием имиджа России как государства слабого, недемократического, не способного и не желающего эффективно реформироваться. Беслан, демонстрации против монетизации льгот, "дело ЮКОСа", критическая зависимость экономики от экспорта нефти и массовая коррупция в последние годы воссоздали потускневший было образ России как принципиально чуждого Европе феномена (Europe's Other).
  Распространение подобного рода представлений имеет прямые политические последствия. Если исходить из того, что Россия навсегда останется внешним, чуждым для Европы государством - сибирской Нигерией или Алжиром, то в значительной степени логичным становится проведение по отношению к ней эгоистичной политики, сводящейся к получению доступа к ее источникам сырья и транзитным путям, лишению страны естественных конкурентных преимуществ и одновременным мерам по ограждению себя от возможных рисков в сфере "мягкой безопасности". Все это может с успехом прикрываться дипломатической обходительностью, проявляемой в ходе саммитов.
  Между тем, если бы Россия была готова к сближению с ЕС на системной основе, она могла бы рассчитывать на более сбалансированный ответ со стороны Европы. Стремление же России остаться в рамках модели избирательного взаимодействия приводит к тому, что и европейцы начинают придерживаться тактики "сбора вишен" (cherry-picking), причем делают это весьма эффективно. В последние годы практически все серьезные споры между Москвой и Брюсселем разрешались на условиях последнего. Этот вывод относится, в частности, к калининградскому транзиту, распространению действия СПС на новые страны - члены Евросоюза, ратификации Россией Киотского протокола. Нет убежденности в том, что даже подписание Россией договора о реадмиссии с ЕС привело бы к демонтажу шенгенской визовой стены в отношении российских граждан, а не оказалось бы разменено на либерализацию выдачи виз, мало что означающую на практике для большинства людей.
  Заметным негативным последствием распространения представлений о "чуждости" России (otherness of Russia) для Европы является также то, что страны - члены ЕС, имеющие с Россией сложные отношения, получили возможность целенаправленно использовать это обстоятельство для усиления собственных позиций внутри ЕС. В 1995 году отношения между Россией и странами Балтии были не менее болезненными, чем в 2005-м, Европа столь же чувствительно относилась к войне в Чечне, уже стоял на повестке дня вопрос о расширении НАТО, и тем не менее тема "оккупации" Прибалтики Советским Союзом занимала в европейских СМИ несопоставимо меньше места. Но за прошедшие 10 лет балтийцы окончательно стали "своими", то есть априори правыми и достойными поддержки. Россия же, по мнению европейцев, наоборот, утратила или отвергла шанс на общее будущее. Можно и необходимо возмущаться двойными стандартами и максимально жестко реагировать на откровенные провокационные жесты и заявления некоторых балтийских деятелей, но это не отменит преимущества статуса "своего" по сравнению с "чужим".
  ОБЩИЕ СОСЕДИ - С КЕМ ОНИ?
  Другой вектор потери влияния связан с переориентацией - хотя пока и в различной степени - европейской части СНГ в сторону Евросоюза, освоением странами региона новой системы координат. Постсоветское пространство, как ареал, в котором Россия по определению является самым сильным игроком, в своей западной части, по сути, перестало существовать и превратилось в новую "промежуточную" Европу. Расширение Европейского союза в 2004 году послужило формальным катализатором этого процесса, но предпосылки начали вызревать раньше. В силу неоднородных причин (свертывание демократии, утрата лидерства в СНГ по темпам и качеству экономического роста, размах терроризма и др.) Россия стала постепенно терять притягательность в глазах различных социально и политически активных слоев общества. Европа же, как зона стабильности и экономического процветания, напротив, становилась все более привлекательной. В какой-то момент значительная часть населения соответствующих стран осознала, что выбор существует.
  Наиболее далеко по пути переориентации на ЕС (это следует подчеркнуть, так как натовская опция пользуется поддержкой меньшинства. - А.М.) продвинулась Украина, где люди уверены: идти по европейскому пути не только выгодно, но и абсолютно возможно. На протяжении нескольких лет 50-60 % участников различных опросов высказывались за вхождение Украины в Евросоюз, в то время как примерно лишь 10 % выступали против. Не менее характерно и то, что, по результатам апрельского (2005 г.) опроса Киевского международного института социологии (КМИС), 48,6 % жителей Украины не сомневались, что страну примут в Европейский союз, а доля пессимистов составила только 23,1 %. По данным киевского Центра Разумкова, при определении главного внешнеполитического приоритета Украины предпочтения ее населения разделились поровну между Россией и ЕС (весной 2005-го ЕС опережал Россию, но в прошлые годы тенденции неоднократно менялись). Однако ситуация выглядит иначе, если учесть возрастной состав респондентов: выбор в пользу России делают люди старше 50 лет, а 18-39-летние однозначно отдают преимущество Европе (44-46 % против 30 -33 % в феврале 2005-го).
  Подобные настроения обусловлены прежде всего двумя обстоятельствами. Во-первых, большое число людей, имеющих либо тесные контакты в странах Центральной Европы, либо опыт трудовой миграции в "старой Европе", сформировали собственное положительное мнение о европейских реалиях. В силу своей высокой трудовой и социальной мобильности эти люди, как правило, убеждены в способности всей Украины соответствовать критериям членства. Во-вторых, уже до своего расширения Евросоюз превратился в ведущего партнера Украины по экспорту. У украинского бизнеса развился вкус к ведению дел в Европе, предприниматели начали ценить стабильность правил игры.
  Поэтому курс администрации Виктора Ющенко на вступление в Европейский союз абсолютно закономерен. Не исключено, что нынешняя попытка закончится неудачей (прежде всего по внутриполитическим причинам) и Украину ожидает зигзагообразное развитие, но трудно представить себе, что европейская идея утратит здесь завоеванные позиции.
  Сходные процессы идут и в других странах. Как же должны были измениться настроения в такой стране, как Молдавия, если ее президент Владимир Воронин, четыре года назад позиционировавший себя как пророссийский политик, решился использовать конфликтные отношения с Москвой в качестве платформы для своего переизбрания на второй срок (безотносительно к способностям Брюсселя разрешить проблему Приднестровья)!
  Даже в Белоруссии, намного более информационно изолированной от Европы, ситуация давно уже не выглядит однозначной. По данным минского Независимого института социально-экономических и политических исследований, доля сторонников вступления Белоруссии в Евросоюз не опускалась начиная с 2002 года ниже отметки 50 % (весной 2005-го 52,8 % - за и 44,4 % - против). За аморфную интеграцию с Россией, то есть сохранение сегодняшней модели, высказываются чуть менее половины опрошенных, но за создание единого государства - лишь 14-15 %. Почти половина населения не поддерживает введение российского рубля, а число сторонников этой меры колеблется вокруг 30-35 %. Весьма вероятно, что в ближайшие годы популярность европейского выбора Белоруссии возрастет под воздействием событий в Украине, а еще в большей степени - польской трансформации, и не исключено, что Белоруссия после ухода Александра Лукашенко захочет последовать украинскому примеру.
  Пусть не так остро и совсем в иных формах, но вопрос об усилении европейской составляющей в собственной политической жизни встал и перед странами Кавказа. Грузия, Армения и Азербайджан оказались адресатами так называемой Европейской политики соседства ЕС. В краткосрочной перспективе этот факт, скорее всего, не будет иметь серьезных последствий, но в будущем все может измениться, если учесть вероятность вступления Турции в Европейский союз в конце следующего десятилетия.
  АЛЬТЕРНАТИВА ИГРЕ С НУЛЕВОЙ СУММОЙ
  Трудно согласиться с теорией заговоров, согласно которой Евросоюз целенаправленно вытесняет Россию из западной части постсоветского пространства. Экономические интересы большинства государств - членов ЕС здесь (пока?) незначительны, очевидно и то, что интеграция региона потребует колоссальных затрат; кроме того, ряд стран - лидеров Европейского союза по-прежнему отдают приоритет России и не хотят вступать с ней в конфликты (вспомним звонок германского канцлера Герхарда Шрёдера Владимиру Путину в разгар "оранжевой революции" в Киеве). Поэтому Брюссель так настойчиво ищет для региона всевозможные промежуточные статусы и не желает открывать перед ним перспективу членства в Евросоюзе. Тем не менее продвижение ЕС все равно происходит - и под давлением новых членов, у которых в этом вопросе свои интересы и чью коллективную способность формировать линию поведения всего сообщества не стоит недооценивать, и в силу настойчивости самих "новых соседей", осознавших себя в качестве субъектов, а не объектов политики.
  Россия стремится предотвратить появление новых разделительных линий на континенте - условно говоря, на восточной границе Украины, - пытаясь сохранить старые на ее западных рубежах. В том числе и поэтому Москва активно вмешивалась в избирательные кампании 2004-2005 годов в Украине и Молдавии и, не исключено, сделает то же самое на украинских парламентских выборах-2006. Но ее способность проводить на данном направлении результативную политику вызывает большие сомнения. У России нет сегодня привлекательного "проекта" (такого, какой имелся у СССР: мировая коммунистическая идеология, или у Российской империи: гарантии безопасности, панславизм, православие). Российский "пряник", по-видимому, недостаточно велик, с точки зрения его потенциальных получателей. Неясно, что еще Москва могла бы сегодня прибавить к тому, что она когда-то предлагала (но тщетно) бывшим республикам СССР в обмен на реинтеграцию. Что касается "кнута", то Россия, безусловно, способна всерьез осложнить функционирование режимов и жизнь населения в соседних государствах. Однако не факт, что экономические санкции окажутся результативными (ведь блокада абхазской границы в декабре 2004-го не привела поддерживаемого Москвой Рауля Хаджимбу в президентское кресло) или вообще возможными (вспомним, кто контролирует транзитные трубопроводы). Удар же по карману простого человека вызовет, естественно, не симпатии, а резко негативное отношение к России и выльется в дальнейшее дистанцирование от нее.
  При этом у проблемы есть и другое решение. Линию раздела между интегрируемым и неинтегрируемым пространствами Европы - эту пресловутую линию "свой - чужой" - нужно перенести на восточные границы России. В противном случае размывание цивилизационно-культурного единства с Украиной и позднее с Белоруссией окажется почти неизбежным, не говоря уже о риске остаться один на один с дестабилизирующимся Югом и крепнущим Китаем.
  Пойти "в Европу вместе с Украиной" вполне возможно. Киев не заинтересован в том, чтобы в стране возникла ситуация жесткого выбора, способного подвергнуть ее испытанию на разрыв. В отличие от стран Балтии носители антироссийских настроений в Украине маргинализованы, и здесь повсеместно господствует прагматизм. По данным того же опроса КМИС, даже в западных областях Украины только 18,4 % опрошенных высказались за полный выход из Единого экономического пространства. Однако акценты в украинской политике расставлены четко: страна собирается интегрироваться в Европу и сотрудничать с Россией, а не наоборот. Игру с нулевой суммой Россия в Украине не выиграет.
 
  НАС НЕ ВОЗЬМУТ?
  В России господствует убеждение в том, что Европа не готова строить с нашей страной интеграционные отношения. Это веский и во многом справедливый тезис. Однако в нем содержится не вся правда, поскольку у Европы до сих пор не было необходимости определяться по этому вопросу прямо и однозначно. Парадоксально, но в европейской дискуссии ответ на вопрос о возможности членства России в ЕС зачастую сводится к констатации того, что Россия этого не хочет. Скорее всего, до тех пор пока Россия четко не заявит о желании интегрироваться, не спровоцирует таким образом европейцев и не докажет свою способность двигаться по одному с ними пути, настоящего ответа Европы мы не узнаем.
  При этом существует несколько императивов европейской политики, которым больше всего соответствуют именно интеграционные отношения с Россией. Во-первых, только интеграция России позволяет завершить так называемый "европейский проект". Во всех остальных случаях речь будет идти лишь о перемещении границ Европы к востоку. Перспектива принятия в Европейский союз Турции уже сделала несостоятельным аргумент о невозможности интеграции стран, бЧльшая часть территории которых находится в Азии (и одновременно - о "слишком большой" численности российского населения; по этому показателю Россия через несколько десятилетий будет уступать Турции). Во всех остальных отношениях Россия - европейская страна. Большинство ее населения составляют славяне, выросшие в традициях православной культуры, а процент мусульманского населения не превышает показателей Франции. Российская "европейская идентичность" не совпадает с принятой в ЕС, но попытки определить ее по-другому, как азиатскую например, будут попросту неуместными. В соответствии с существующими нормами европейского законодательства Россия однозначно имела бы право на подачу заявки на членство.
  Во-вторых, история Евросоюза научила европейцев, что интеграция на базе системной трансформации дает гораздо более весомые гарантии предсказуемого и дружественного характера поведения государств, в особенности крупных, чем любая экономическая взаимозависимость. В-третьих, Европейский союз постепенно превращается в глобального игрока не только в экономике. В этом контексте Европа, объединив свой потенциал с российским, качественно усилила бы свои позиции и на азиатском, и на атлантическом флангах. В-четвертых, интеграция создала бы для европейцев более благоприятные условия доступа к российским энергоносителям.
  Вероятность получения негативного ответа (к слову, до сих пор была формально отклонена только одна заявка на членство, поданная Марокко, чья неевропейская идентичность не нуждается в доказательствах) снижается и в связи с тем, что Россия может пока нацеливаться не на вступление в ЕС, а на интеграцию в Европу в рамках какого-то специального формата, что не одно и то же. Европейское понимание демократии и верховенства закона, то есть пресловутых "ценностей", России в этом варианте придется принять целиком, а acquis communautaire (вся совокупность права Евросоюза и европейских сообществ. - Ред.) - не полностью и в любом случае не на ранних стадиях процесса. Это позволило бы нейтрализовать нынешнее (естественное после крупнейшего в истории роста числа стран - членов Евросоюза в 2004-м) негативное отношение старых участников этой организации к ее дальнейшему расширению.
 
  ЧТО ДЕЛАТЬ?
  Первое и главное, что нужно сделать России в сфере ее отношений с Европейским союзом, - это наконец определиться со стратегическим выбором. Стратегической целью должна считаться в конечном итоге интеграция России в Европу, достигаемая через постепенную горизонтальную (секторальную) интеграцию и повышение уровня участия России в процессе принятия политических решений ЕС. Поскольку в силу несопоставимости экономических потенциалов да и по другим причинам Россия не может иметь с Евросоюзом отношений, аналогичных форматам ЕС - США, ЕС - Китай, ЕС - Япония, альтернативой интеграции является сегодняшняя модель. А она, как показывает практика, не гарантирует от конфликтов, не обеспечивает должного влияния на Брюссель и напрямую увеличивает для России риск в одиночку бороться с вызовами XXI века.
  Непреодолимых препятствий для движения в интеграционном направлении нет. Необходимо лишь осознать, что политическая демократия, верховенство закона и права человека - это не просто слова и тем более не инструменты, которыми европейские переговорщики пользуются для получения уступок от России, а неотъемлемые слагаемые успеха в современном мире.
  Приоритетом на ближайшие 10-15 лет должно стать осуществление проектов, способных дать непосредственный интеграционный эффект, то есть привести к возникновению сообществ экономических или социальных субъектов. Только так можно на деле преодолеть разделение по линии "свой - чужой". Особо следует подчеркнуть важность инфраструктурных проектов во всех сферах - от транспортной до таможенной, средств коммуникации и туризма, а также стимулирования обмена в области образования. "Дорожные карты" обладают в этом контексте определенным потенциалом, и было бы очень важно, чтобы они превратились в нечто большее, чем просто декларации.
  Приоритет приоритетов - переход в отношениях с Европейским союзом на безвизовый режим, то есть закрепление права граждан на краткосрочное свободное посещение друг друга, не подразумевающее разрешение на работу. Ничто не может сегодня столь же быстро создать российско-европейскую общность, как устранение необходимости для простых людей проходить визовые формальности. В Европе эта проблема иногда приобретает искаженное звучание: у людей создается впечатление, что речь идет чуть ли не о включении России в шенгенскую зону, а не о простом переносе процедуры проверки паспортов из консульств на границу (кстати, при современных средствах контроля это позволяет сэкономить на консулатах). Достаточно желающих поэксплуатировать такие темы, как наплыв рабочей силы и вал преступности. Однако шансы договориться есть. Европа заинтересована в реадмиссионных соглашениях и усилении контроля на восточных и южных границах России, и при условии повышения качества российских паспортов и реальной борьбы с коррупцией в правоохранительной системе безвизовый режим видится достижимым. Украина, к слову, может оказаться пионером в согласовании режима, на деле близкого к безвизовому.
  Уже в среднесрочном будущем следует определиться с юридическим форматом интеграции и начать соответствующие переговоры. В ближайшее десятилетие отношения могут регулироваться каким-то юридически обязывающим документом, органически вытекающим из СПС, - например, предлагавшимся экспертами договором о стратегическом партнерстве, который должен четко фиксировать в преамбуле намерения перейти в перспективе к отношениям интеграции. Позднее Россия могла бы заключить с ЕС договор об ассоциации или вступить в Европейское экономическое пространство (European Economic Area).
  Последний вариант сегодня не считается в России приемлемым, поскольку даже страны, представляющие это пространство, прежде всего Швейцария и Норвегия, фактически не имеют возможности участвовать в разработке законодательства, которое им приходится впоследствии исполнять. Но, во-первых, формула участия в этом пространстве все-таки индивидуальна. Норвегия, например, при своем вступлении в него определенные рычаги влияния получила. Россия в принципе может рассчитывать на большее - в зависимости от параметров, перспектив и значимости ее экономики для Европы. Во-вторых, Евросоюз может предпочесть именно эту формулу интеграции России и готов будет в ответ расширить поле компромисса. В-третьих, само Европейское экономическое пространство может расширяться, эволюционировать (в частности, за счет вступления в него той же Украины) и укрепляться относительно Брюсселя.
  Если же высокая фактическая степень интеграции, обеспечивающая России доступ к принятию решений, будет достигнута, то, с одной стороны, необходимость добиваться формального членства понизится. С другой же - переход к членству в этих условиях не потребует чрезмерных усилий.
  В своих отношениях с Европой Россия напоминает сегодня сказочного витязя на распутье, мучительно решающего, продолжать ли ему путь. Движение вперед, к интеграции может быть чревато для России очень болезненными последствиями, и оно же способно оказаться весьма выгодным для нее. Но европейская интеграция практически повсеместно порождает ситуации обоюдного выигрыша (win-win situations) - в противном случае она бы не состоялась. А вот если мы будем топтаться на месте, то выиграть нам точно ничего не удастся.
 Любовь Шишелина
 
 ГОЛУБОЙ СЛЕД ОРАНЖЕВЫХ РЕВОЛЮЦИЙ
 12.3.2005. (www.rustrana.ru)
 
 В палитре отечественных оценок последних событий на Украине и в Молдавии совершенно отсутствует голубой цвет, цвет флага Европейского Союза, сыгравшего в этих событиях далеко не последнюю роль. Никто не отметил того важнейшего обстоятельства, что вот уже скоро год как эти страны, вместе с Белоруссией и республиками Кавказа официально находятся в зоне действия принятой Евросоюзом "европейской политики соседства" (ЕПС). Объектом этой политики является и Россия. Первым результатом "политики соседства" стало для нас "урегулирование" вопроса о транзите в Калининградскую область. Для Украины и Молдавии - выборы "в пользу ЕС". И то, что следующие парламентские и президентские выборы в любом из объектов ЕПС так же подвергнутся давлению со стороны Евросоюза (а не только США), - это уже не предположение, это данность. Вопрос лишь в том, до каких пор мы будем делать вид, что не замечаем прямого вмешательства в сферу наших стратегических интересов и нашу внутреннюю политику.
  Вообще восточная политика Европейского Союза за полтора десятилетия своего существования преодолела несколько важных этапов, прежде чем обрела форму "Европейской политики соседства". Собственно, путь этот - от судьбоносного совещания в Маастрихте, принявшего в 1991 году решения об одновременном углублении и расширении Евросоюза, через Соглашения об ассоциации, выработку "копенгагенских критериев" и "белой книги", до присоединения стран Восточной Европы и Прибалтики - оказался ошеломляюще быстрым, относительно прямым и последовательным. 12 мая 2005 года исполнится год со времени принятия ЕПС, которая является по сути новой стратегией Европейского Союза в отношениях с Россией. Полностью погрузившись в анализ экономических последствий предложенной нам программы "четырех общих пространств", мы легкомысленно недооценили суть стратегии "четырех главных свобод", одновременно предложенной Евросоюзом бывшим западным и кавказским республикам СССР. А между тем, суть этой политики коренным образом меняет характер наших взаимоотношений с Европейским Союзом.
  ЕПС не предусматривает учета интересов России и возникающих вокруг нее интеграционных структур. В частности, поддерживая интеграцию в ЕС Украины, брюссельские стратеги подчеркивают, что "установление общего экономического пространства России, Украины, Белоруссии и Казахстана, может стать тормозом в развитии отношений Украины с Евросоюзом". Поэтому де следует поддерживать создание на Украине независимого демократического открытого общества, "которое одно только и может легитимно избрать направление ориентации этой страны". В качестве средства "поддержки" такого общества Евросоюз призвал к мониторингу состояния демократии в ходе президентских выборов 2004 года. Собственно, расписал полную программу действий Европейской политики соседства, направленной, как это трактуется в преамбуле документа, "на преодоление разделительных линий на континенте" (читай: на перенос еще дальше на Восток границы между ЕС и Россией). Схожий план действий, но с поправкой на проблему Приднестровья и иные сроки выборов, принят Евросоюзом в отношении Молдавии. Не удивительно поэтому, что оттуда были высланы российские наблюдатели.
  В стратегии ЕПС России, наравне с остальными государствами-наследниками СССР, отводится место объекта политики ЕС, а не равноправного партнера. Очевидно, в глазах европейского сообщества авторитет России, действительно, достиг нижней отметки. Собственно, ЕПС - это второй акт и третий уровень наступления ЕС на российские позиции, после приема в Евросоюз государств Восточной Европы и Прибалтики, включавшего два уровня: экспансию в зону стратегических интересов России (страны Восточной Европы) и экспансию в исторические земли России (бывшие республики СССР, территория которых не одно столетие входила в состав Российской Империи). Теперь, с принятием ЕПС, речь идет об экспансии в пределы возможного интеграционного образования вокруг Российской Федерации и далее вглубь ее собственной территории.
  Итак, что на самом деле представляет собой "политика соседства"?
  На наш взгляд, основным смыслом ЕПС является последовательная асимметричная конвергенция "соседей", их адаптация к т.н. "западным цивилизационным ценностям". За ней стоит гигантский финансовый и волевой ресурс, четкий план действий. Россию не может не волновать, что в самое ближайшее время Евросоюзу придется определиться с обретенной вместе с республиками Прибалтики теперь уже "своей" русской диаспорой, однонациональной по отношению к населению центра "пророссийской" интеграции. И естественно, решать эти вопросы Брюссель будет исходя из собственной политической выгоды, на что и направлена рассчитанная на десятилетие "Европейская политика соседства".
  ЕПС является составной частью Европейской стратегии безопасности, оформившейся в декабре 2003 года, и состоит из двух направлений: "Средиземноморского" и "Запада СНГ", куда примыкают также кавказские республики бывшего СССР. В общей линии развития восточной политики ЕС "политику соседства" можно оценить как соответствующий новому уровню сложности этап западноевропейской экспансии. Задачи ЕПС поражают территориальным и политическим размахом. Заявленную Брюсселем цель ("не допустить появления разделительных линий между новыми членами ЕС и их соседями", а также "перенести такие преимущества расширения, как мир, стабильность и процветание, на территорию соседних государств") трудно понять иначе, как начало поэтапного политического давления на восточных соседей с целью их адаптации к стандартам западного общества.
  Задача ЕПС - это продолжение экспансии Европейского Союза, прежде всего, в восточном и южном направлении. Задача трудная, поскольку здесь ЕС сталкивается с гораздо более крупными и отличными от себя объектами. Вряд ли кто-то может представить, что вслед за странами Магриба Евросоюз окажется способным поглотить весь Африканский континент или вслед за Украиной - всю Россию до Тихого океана. Кстати, сама Украина - крепкий орешек для ЕС по всем параметрам, включая культурологические. Но за фасадом ЕПС - интересы Германии и Франции, этих скрыто соперничающих основоположников ЕС, стремящихся к симметрии своих флангов. Такое стремление к франко-германскому балансу может далеко завести европейское сообщество, особенно ввиду того, что новые его члены, на которых возложено воплощение "политики соседства", все еще интегрированы в ЕС во многом условно. Пройдет не одно десятилетие, прежде чем они достигнут среднего для ЕС уровня экономического развития. Это только, так сказать, видимая сторона айсберга ЕПС; сам айсберг со всеми его очертаниями еще не показался из моря бумаг на брюссельских столах (возможно, это произойдет к 2007 году). Для нас наиболее важно то, что роль главных субъектов ЕПС отведена нашим бывшим союзникам и бывшим советским республикам. А основными объектами, кроме России, станут наши потенциальные партнеры по пост-Союзной (постсоветской) интеграции - Украина, Белоруссия, Молдавия, а также Грузия, Армения и Азербайджан.
  Главный акцент политики соседства возлагается на приграничное сотрудничество, на так называемую готовность соседних стран разделить с вновь принятыми странами ценности ЕС: либерализацию торговли, интенсификацию контактов в области науки, культуры, образования, усиление заботы о правах человека, экологии, решение проблем энергетики и т.п. Сами по себе эти цели можно только приветствовать, но средства их достижения предполагают асимметричную конвергенцию если не целых стран, то хотя бы их приграничных территорий.
  Сейчас уже речь идет не о полуторамиллионной Эстонии или трех с половиной миллионах жителей Литвы, а о таких "объектах" как 50-миллионная Украина, превышающая по масштабам столь проблемную для ЕС Польшу, а по политической сложности превосходящей ее многократно. На эти цели, названные "формированием дружеского окружения", брошены гигантские деньги из уже известных программ TACIS, PHARE, ISPA, CARDS и совершенно новых, созданных под очень конкретные задачи асимметричной конвергенции.
  Нельзя не сказать о критериях соответствия стран, с которыми Брюссель собирается налаживать добрососедские отношения, стандартам ЕС в области свободы, демократии и прав человека. Пока приняты только планы действий в отношении Украины и Молдавии. Но, если учесть, что основными субъектами ЕПС станут государства, ставшие членами Евросоюза в ходе последней волны экспансии ЕС, нетрудно представить ситуацию, когда "высокие стандарты" европейской демократии и прав человека нам будут диктовать Латвия и Эстония. Здесь, как говорится, комментарии излишни: абсурд политики ЕПС в этом случае совершенно очевиден.
  Принятые 9 декабря 2004 года планы действий Евросоюза в отношении Украины и Молдавии, по сути, идентичны. Это оказание влияния в "демократическом русле" на выборы парламентов и президентов, а также одностороннее воздействие на все основные стороны жизни абсорбируемых стран. Налицо стремление к эксплуатации недр и производственных мощностей этих республик, превращению Украины в рынок сбыта для ЕС.
  Однако, в отличие от предыдущих стратегий новая стратегия ЕС "радует" некоторым вниманием к специфике новых объектов. (Со странами Восточной Европы и Прибалтики было не так: в Брюсселе лишь за несколько месяцев до их принятия в челны ЕС задумались о преимущественно сельскохозяйственной ориентации экспорта этих стран и об остроте проблемы русской диаспоры в прибалтийских государствах. В результате Польшу и Венгрию теперь постоянно потрясают забастовки фермеров, а Латвию и Эстонию - манифестации русских школьников и студентов. О положении в бывшей ГДР Брюссель и вовсе предпочитает не вспоминать). Теперь Европа четко сознает, что на Украине, например, есть самолетостроительная отрасль, а в Молдавии - русское Приднестровье. Несколько утрируя, можно сказать, что различия между планами по двум этим странам состоит в том, что план по Украине делает особый акцент на "освоении" украинского самолетостроения (очевидно, предполагается вытеснение оттуда России), а план по Молдавии - работу по интеграции Приднестровья в Молдавское государство. Причем последней цели, должна способствовать и Украина. Скорее всего, можно ожидать развития сценария, предложенного Президентом Ворониным еще в 2002 году: признать Приднестровье объектом для международной контртеррористической операции, со всеми вытекающими отсюда последствиями. А что Россия? Россия, как видим, опять в позе - позе уважения "целостности и суверенитета" другого государства без учета новой геополитической ситуации, в которой эти понятия сброшены со счетов, а российские целостность и суверенитет не уважаются.
  Где стратегия разрешения приднестровского вопроса? Где вообще российская стратегия в "ближнем зарубежье"? Ее как не было, так и нет. Понятна в этом ключе перспектива восточной Украины и Крыма в случае, если они предпримут попытку сопротивляться "западнизации".
  Включение в мае 2004 года восьми стран Восточной Европы и Прибалтики в состав ЕС создало для них качественно новую ситуацию, превратив из объекта в субъект политики Европейского Союза. Но все ли страны готовы к этой миссии? Впрочем, Польша и Литва под руководством комиссара Х.Соланы уже выдержали первый экзамен на так называемое "региональное взаимодействие" в ходе выборов на Украине. Действительно, ЕПС помимо трансграничного сотрудничества, намерена руководить и региональным взаимодействием новых членов и западных республик бывшего СССР. Следует ожидать, что подобно тому, как в свое время Финляндия в программе Северного Измерения, Польша и бывшие республики Прибалтики станут локомотивами новых региональных программ ЕПС, таких, как Программа Балтийского моря, Латвия - Литва - Беларусь, а также Польша - Украина - Беларусь. Понятно, что выполнение функций мотора регионального сотрудничества невозможно без пересмотра отношения к партнеру в сторону смягчения претензий. Совладают ли с новыми задачами Польша, Литва и Латвия, покажут уже предусмотренные программой в качестве первого этапа ближайшие три года. Для России важно, на какой основе будет достигнуто взаимопонимание в этих региональных структурах.
  Единственная возможность для государств Восточной Европы и Прибалтики не ухудшить при проведении ЕПС свои отношения с Россией - это способствовать ее вовлечению в новую субрегиональную политику. К сожалению, миссия Польши и Литвы в украинских выборах - очевидный пример негативного сценария. Если взглянуть на проблему глазами восточных европейцев, то очевидно, что ее интеграция одному Евросоюзу не по силам. Поднять Украину, которая по параметрам территории, населения, ресурсного потенциала почти равна всем странам "последней волны расширения", - это действительно сверхзадача. Разорвать Украину куда легче, но при этом неизбежен хотя бы поверхностный конфликт ЕС с Россией. Такой сценарий поглощения Украины был бы выгоден исключительно США. Среди европейских стран ему должна противиться Франция, так как подобное развитие событий ломает весь баланс ее отношений с Германией. Может ли устраивать такой сценарий страны Восточной Европы? Думается, что тоже нет. Украина на рубеже 90-х годов уже стала препятствием к осуществлению идеи центральноевропейской федерации, поскольку в силу своей величины не вмещалась в это потенциальное образование. Теперь вновь придется искать "региональную роль" для Украины. Захотят ли европейцы признать ее лидером? Понятно, что на равных союз с Украиной для них столь же маловероятен, как союз с Россией. Следовательно, - нет. Было бы разумнее оставить Украину в ее роли "моста", но этого как раз и не дают сделать США да и политика соседства ЕС.
  Есть ли в рамках политики ЕС возможности для формирования между Россией и государствами Восточной Европы отношений, действительно устраивающих обе стороны, - отношений не менторских и иерархических (как это предлагает ЕПС), а подлинно партнерских? Здесь многое зависит от того, какие силы придут к власти в этих государствах, захотят ли они конструктивных отношений с Россией, поймут ли что улучшение экономической ситуации в России и достижение политической стабильности на Востоке жизненно важны для самих стран Восточной Европы и Прибалтики.
  Перспектива развития отношений России и ЕС сулит странам региона большие капитальные вложения в строительство транспортных магистралей трубопроводов для экспорта российского сырья. Однако ЕПС не предлагает пока ни одного решения, устраивающего российскую сторону: возьмем ли мы проблему русских в Прибалтике, калининградский транзит или экономическое взаимодействие с Украиной и Молдавией. Поэтому Москве вряд ли следует пассивно ожидать более полного и понятного для нас оформления этой политики: история предоставляет нам последний шанс использовать имеющийся потенциал в отношениях с субъектами и объектами ЕПС как бывшими членами СЭВ и бывшими советскими республиками. России вполне по силам также участвовать в конкретизации ЕПС через диалог с лидерами европейского сообщества. Уравновешенная комбинация этих направлений может действительно открыть путь к преодолению разделительных линий в Европе и сделать "соседскую политику" на самом деле "добрососедской".
 
 Fabrizio Tassinari
 
 "SECURITY AND INTEGRATION IN THE EU NEIGHBOURHOOD.
 THE CASE FOR REGIONALISM"
 CEPS Working Document N. 226/July 2005
 
  Inside, Outside and the Figure of Europe
  In order to unfold the security/integration spectrum, and to problematise the elements of this spectrum, the first step is to reflect on the figure of Europe, and particularly on the distinction between inside and outside in the context of European power dynamics. In the EU-Europe, the inside/outside dichotomy has gradually taken the shape of an identity project. This is because, on the one hand, Europe has been defined by trying to make sense of what has been part of it: the Franco-German reconciliation; Europe's liberal and socialdemocratic roots; and its different layers of governance. More interestingly, however, Europe has also been defined in negative terms: i.e. by looking at what is not part of it and by
  identifying what Europe is not: its 'other'.
  Security discourses have played a central role in this 'othering' practice. Europe's 'other', initially, was Europe's own past: the two world wars, the Franco-German rivalry and totalitarian ideologies.2 The initial push for integration, in this sense, came from security concerns because it focused on the need to protect Europe from ever again incurring into its own past. Over the decades, this 'othering' practice has taken more geopolitical and civilisational connotations, and reflected the tension between Europe's paramount need to protect all that it achieved in terms of integration on the one hand, and its inherent mission to spread these achievements to the rest of the continent on the other. Europe's vast neighbourhood has thus come to be regarded as the 'other', and as a sort of litmus-test against which to compare that which European integration has accomplished: Turkey, Russia, Northern Africa and the Balkans have taken turns in incarnating in the European imagination examples of what Europe is not: Europe is not authoritarian, not violent, not poor and so forth.
  If one takes this inside/outside characterisation of the European power dynamics, a peculiar image of European security and integration emerges. Security practices within the EU have strived to make security no longer an issue, and the integration process has provided the means necessary to achieve this goal. The European experiment has been about dealing with threats and risks in a more politicised manner, rather than by using force; it has been about revisiting the modernist principles of state sovereignty, and thus embedding the values of liberal democracy into 'post-modern' multilevel governance. In this way, European integration has created a 'multi-perspectival polity', pushed transnational socialisation up to uncharted levels and turned the EU into a 'security community'.
  The paradox of this otherwise unique experiment is that what has been achieved inside the EU 'freezes' as soon as Europe approaches its normative and spatial borders. Beyond these limits, policies regress - more or less gradually - to being exclusionary; social interaction is re-'securitised', and Europe returns to be a dynamic based on sovereignty, borders and territory. The integration project, in this context, is no longer perceived as an experiment of peace, prosperity and well-being to be shared and spread across the continent, but rather becomes an oasis to be protected. For those who are inside or who have prospects to enter, the EU marks the shift from the modernist phraseology of confrontation and negotiation to the post-modern lexicon of dialogue and socialisation. But for those who are not given a chance to make this shift, for those who are bound to remain outside, the EU-Europe is perceived as an insurmountable wall.
  This inside/outside dilemma in Europe comes with one important corollary. This can be portrayed by elaborating on the metaphor of the concentric-circled 'gradated' empire.
  According to this representation, the international structure, especially in the European case, is gradually taking the shape of a post-statist formation. It defines a vision of sovereignty and territory that goes beyond the nation-state as the primary unit of international relations, and is characterised by a hierarchical system of progressively decreasing power, where the power of the centre diminishes the farther away an actor stands from it: hence, the image of the concentric circles.
  The EU is an outstanding example of this post-statist empire model with its network politics, multi-ethnic diversity and cross-border cooperation. In the EU context, however, state-actors remain a defining component, and their 'distance from the centre' is measured not only in geographical terms, but also, and more importantly, in institutional ones. Institutional and administrative 'distance' is measured on the basis of their degree of integration into the EU, as explained in the table above.
  The corollary, therefore, is that, although the power constellation defined by European integration largely subscribes to this concentric circle scheme, institutional and administrative distance defines an inside/outside architecture that is much more exclusionary. On the one hand, states have so far had a reasonable flexibility to choose their own positioning in relation to the 'core' of this quasi-empire. Countries like the UK are EU members, without being part of the eurozone; Denmark and Sweden are integrated in the Schengen system, but are not in the eurozone. Norway is not even an EU member, but it is integrated in the EU single market. The new member states are pro-tempore 'discriminated', but will in due time be given the opportunity to decide their positioning within the EU. Those countries that are not integrated, on the other hand, do not merely occupy the outermost circles of Europe's power constellation.
  They are cut out by the institutional barrier, although they are increasingly influenced by policies made in Brussels. For current or prospective candidate countries (circle no. 5), there are reasonable expectations to cross the institutional barrier at some point. Other European neighbours (circle no. 6) may be hopefully waiting for a 'go-ahead' from Brussels in the medium-to-long term. The other non-European neighbours are left out in the cold.
 
  Membership, Partnership and the EU Neighbourhood Strategy
  The point, therefore, is that the institutional barrier constitutes the ultimate hindrance in an already rather hierarchical concentric-circled structuration. The EU has devised several, and quite different, policies that reflect this inside/outside tension in Europe's construction. In keeping with this dichotomic rationale, membership' and 'partnership' constitute the two main paths chosen by the EU to address such tension. Admittedly, this dichotomy is not perfect. There are countries, like the EEA group, that are clearly integrated in the EU power constellation, but are not members. Likewise, there are cases in which partnership has undergone major setbacks, like that with Belarus. More often, Brussels has adopted a two-tier strategy, where partnership (and stabilisation before that) precedes membership, as in the case of the new EU members from Central Europe. This notwithstanding, the two approaches remain distinct. Membership and partnership abide by their own separate rules, have their own structures and instruments, and follow different procedures.
  The promise of membership has constituted the EU's most powerful foreign policy tool. In the conceptual context proposed here, membership has in fact become a sort of 'internalisation' ritual, in which the enlargement process, with its negotiating mechanisms based on conditionality and its legal set-up based on the Copenhagen criteria, delineates the way in which European norms, values and institutions permeate the domestic realm of prospective members.
  Membership, therefore, is not only a foreign policy instrument, but it marks the passage from 'outside' to 'inside' of EU-Europe's power constellation, thus becoming a major crossroads for the dynamics of European security and integration.
  What lies behind this passage from the outside to the inside is the tension between the deepening and the widening of the Union. The pro-enlargement argument is built upon security concerns as well as moral grounds. Widening brings security to the EU by making prospective members more prosperous and democratic and thus by 'desecuritisating' potential threats coming from them. On the other hand, because of the perennially fluid state of the integration process, enlargement constitutes also a formidable challenge to the solidity of the European project and to the very legitimacy of the EU as a political entity. New members' poorer economic conditions, or their contrasting domestic and foreign policy postures, may in fact bring insecurity into the EU and impact dramatically on the 'deepening' of the Union.
  Current debates on future enlargements are symptomatic of how the integration/security dilemma unfolds in the EU neighbourhood. The Western Balkans constitute a painful remainder of Europe's foreign and security policy failures during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. In this case, the EU has offered the long-term prospect of membership also because this is the only answer that it can provide against the possibility of renewed instability in the heart of Europe. The dilemma is also boldly present in the passionate debates across Europe concerning the prospects of Turkey's EU membership, which focus on Europe's civilisational roots, on the stability of its secular societies and on the economic implications of Turkey's poor and large population. Even without dwelling on any of these important matters, it is apparent that the security component is central in the question of the EU enlargement to Turkey, which ultimately concerns Europe's ability to deal with a large, moderate Muslim country as an antidote against violent Islamic fundamentalism.
  The partnership approach has pursued a different goal and obtained different results from the enlargement, although it shared its conceptual roots. The conceptual rationale of both the membership and partnership approaches is indeed that Brussels is an inherently civilian and 'soft' power: the EU does not aim to impose but to persuade its neighbours; it does not aim to coerce them but to attract them. The major point of difference between partnership and membership is, of course, that partnership has in most cases not aimed at internalizing neighbours, but at stabilising them. The EU has sought stabilisation by devising a variety of unilateral (e.g. the Common Strategies), bilateral (e.g. Association Agreements) and multilateral (e.g. the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe) schemes. This remarkable range of instruments is designed to respond to the specific and very different needs and challenges in the neighbourhood. What is common to all these approaches, however, is that partnership has so far
  firmly kept neighbours outside the EU-European project. Despite the term, 'partnership' assumes by definition the existence of, and interaction between, more than one party, it is mostly the EU that sets the terms and determines the conditions of the relation. Neighbours (with some notable exceptions, like Russia) may receive rather substantial and attractive offers of cooperation, but are hardly in a position to negotiate them. They may be consulted, but planning and decision-making, as well the conditions for cooperation, are rarely a shared process. In other words, the paradox is that EU partnership programmes aim to engage neighbours but they do so through practices of securitisation and 'othering'. It should thus be apparent why partnership is exposed from the outset to severe shortcomings. A 'soft' power that aims to exert influence in its neighbourhood will need to offer substantial incentives in order to attract their interest, and will need to focus on participation rather than coercion if it has to be persuasive. The EU partnership approach, instead, is understandably composed of numerous 'sticks' - 'othering', veiled unilateralism and a degree of conditionality - while it excludes the main 'carrot' that Brussels has so far been able to offer: integration. In sum, when the EU talks membership to its neighbours, it is inclusive: it sets conditions, offers significant incentives and most of all signals the strength of its integration process. When Brussels talks partnership to its neighbours, it is exclusive: it is often ineffective, rather unattractive and unable to exert influence or to preserve security on the continent. This dichotomic way of presenting the dynamic of European security and integration has the disadvantage of simplifying mightily the fluid nature of European security and integration as well as individual neighbourhood cases. Yet, one can still fit inside this continuum the major trends of European security and integration, or at least the inclusive and exclusive rationale behind them. Focusing on these two sides of this analytical spectrum, on the other hand, has the advantage of underlining the limits of the EU neighbourhood strategy until the 2004 EU enlargement, which is what this study goes on to address.
 
  Europe's Quest for 'Difference' in the Neighbourhood ...
  Te dyadic manner in which European security and integration has been introduced thus far is instrumental to identify the major conceptual underpinning of this article. These dichotomies indeed reflect visions of the European reality that are based on different premises and aim at different goals. The construction of Europe, however, does not have fixed goals: the EU is neither aiming at the superstate model, nor at the regional UN one; but it doesn't aim to subsume the two models either. It is an experiment that contains several social and political units but does not quite resemble any of them: the EU is much more than an object, but is still less than a subject of international relations; it has secularist roots co-existing with religious diversity; it has a (growing) neo-liberal 'Anglo-Saxon' component blended into the Franco- German social-democratic tradition. And although one may tip the scale in favour of one option or the other, the EU remains an open-ended process. Open-endedness, however, does not mean formlessness. The EU (and the EEC before that) has been about shaping a new political subjectivity out of the existing political realities, without denying the legitimacy of any of them. Its distinctiveness is enshrined in its 'transformative power',5 in its ability to 'widen the context', as Robert Cooper put it: to contain, rather than resolve, the divisions characterising European social and political reality. This embodies Europe's concern with what French philosopher Jacques Derrida called difference.
  This quest for difference is probably nowhere more challenging than in the EU periphery. The EU neighbourhood is the geographical and conceptual lieu where the Union's quest for security and its push for further integration are measured against each other. The neighbourhood is where the EU's ability to exert influence is weaker and Europe's power structuration becomes more fuzzy, a sort of intermediate category between inside and outside, where internal and external security interdependences tend to "become one". The EU neighbourhood is not directly concerned with integration, but is directly linked to the EU political and ethical mission civilizatrice to extend peace and well-being to the whole continent. It may well qualify as an 'other', but its vicinity makes it close to 'us'. It is not inside, but is not firmly outside either, especially in security terms. At the same time, as the analysis above highlighted, the EU periphery is also where the Union's political and normative limits are approached, and the EU's 'post-modern' ability to pursue its 'different' project clashes with the more traditionalist forces of modernity: borders, territory and sovereignty. Here is where Europe's idealism based on the unfaltering optimism vis-a-vis multilateralism, multiculturalism, the rule of law, respect for human rights and free market meets with the very real(ist) need of protecting these values from the broad range of threats arising at Europe's doorstep. As a result, the neighbourhood is where the quest for compatibility between 'inside' and 'outside', between 'widening' and 'deepening', and, ultimately between 'security' and 'integration' becomes a more daunting project.
  The argument can be made that, up until the 2004 enlargement round came to a close, the EU chose not to address systematically the interdependence between security and integration considerations in its neighbourhood. It has let the two dynamics unfold in parallel and has postponed facing them. The neighbourhood strategy for countries that were blessed with Brussels' 'go-ahead' saw partnership as a long-term pre-enlargement strategy. All the others were offered somewhat less attractive, and more 'othering', partnership packages. Yet, at the dawn of the 2004 enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, it became all the more apparent that such a double strategy could not continue to be perpetuated. The 'Big Bang' enlargement, with its outstanding economic, social and political implications, magnified the EU proverbial conservatism in relation to its 'golden' carrot - the promise of membership - and at the same time exposed Brussels to the deficiencies of its partnership programmes.
  The launch of a new neighbourhood strategy was thus motivated by the need to come out of the blind alley into which the membership/partnership dichotomy had ended. Already in 1998, the government of Poland, at the time still an applicant country, addressed the neighbourhood conundrum by calling for a new Eastern policy of the Union. In 2002, the pressure became more consistent as Great Britain and Sweden urged the European Commission to think of a more substantial strategy vis-a-vis the EU prospective neighbours. It was then in 2003, that the Commission put forward some concrete proposals for a new approach of the Union towards its prospective neighbourhood, which resulted in the establishment of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The ENP calls for a comprehensive single strategy for the neighbours of the enlarged EU, which former EU Commission President Romano Prodi referred to as a 'ring of friends' surrounding the Union. The lexicon introduced by the ENP, and even more by the introductory 'Wider Europe' concept before that, was initially hailed by observers and policy-makers as ambitious and even visionary. The reasons for this optimism arguably resided in its innovative approach to Europe's 'difference' and in the strategy devised to address it.
  'Difference', in the case of the ENP, means first of all differentiation. The countries addressed by the policy present different social, political and economic patterns and cleavages. The ENP accounts for this diversity by dealing with each of the partners individually, in a bilateral way, negotiating and agreeing upon specific country programmes and 3-to-5 years Action Plans for each of the neighbours. Difference in the ENP, however, is also contained in the very idea of devising a single policy that aims at giving a holistic approach to this diversity characterising the EU new neighbourhood. Despite the irreconcilable differences among EU neighbours, the European Commission argues that "the key cooperation objectives to be addressed are broadly valid for all". This goal is substantiated by the prospective creation of a European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI). The Instrument - whose date of launching is synchronised with the new EU budgetary term in 2007 - will replace existing financial instruments for neighbours (such as MEDA and TACIS) and will grant a progressive increase to the financial means allocated for the ENP until 2013. It will be composed of two windows, one devoted to bilateral and cross-border projects and the other to financing multilateral projects. Most importantly, it will finance actions both inside and outside the Union, which represents a telling signal of the ENP's ambition to move beyond the binary divisions characterising the EU's previous neighbourhood strategies.
  Even more revealing of the centrality of difference in the ENP is the wording chosen to introduce the policy that, according to former EU Commission President Romano Prodi, is designed to offer 'more than a partnership and less than a membership', and to share with the partner countries 'everything but institutions' in exchange for internal reforms.11 Such lexicon explicitly signals the novelty of the new approach. The ENP does not quite resemble any of the existing strategies, but picks elements from many of them and attempts to complement their inputs. The ENP aims to introduce elements of the EU enlargement strategy within those of more traditional partnership. It offers a degree of integration but not the promise of membership. In sum, it promises to blur the contraposition between inside and outside, in tune with the overall dynamics of European security and integration.
 
  ... and its Perils
  Although these ambitious proposals attest to the EU's pursuit of a Europe without dichotomies - and a continent without dividing lines - the reality of the EU neighbourhood strategy is more controversial. One paramount rationale behind the policy indeed remains that neighbours are a source of instability to the Union, which needs to be contained. This automatically retrieves the inside/outside othering practice: quite symptomatically, the very denomination 'European' Neighbourhood Policy suggests that EU partner countries - some of them lying geographically in Europe - are Europe's, and not the EU's, neighbours, thus confirming Brussels' wellestablished practice of 'copyrighting' the meaning of Europe, while othering the outsiders.
  The EU's continued inability to tackle Europe's security and integration conundrum is however more substantial than that, and can be observed in three major shortcomings of the ENP. The main peril of the ENP is its ambiguity. The ENP's ultimate goals remain hybrid and the policy can be regarded both as a potential long-term pre-accession strategy and an enhanced partnership framework. As Prodi initially argued, this quest for striking a balance between partnership and membership should not 'exclude the latter'. The European Commission has later played down - and even explicitly excluded - such an option.12 But this formulation is in fact emblematic of the very dangerous oxymoron contained in the ENP. A truly innovative neighbourhood strategy is one that makes enhanced partnership valuable in itself, without needing to wave the membership option. The elusive membership prospect kills the 'difference' of the policy from the outset, quite simply because membership remains, in the eyes of the neighbours, far more appealing than any conceivable partnership proposal. Moreover, such phraseology is in sharp contrast with established historical developments within the EU: it does not ring true to partner countries like Morocco, which saw its membership aspirations turned down in 1987. For other hopeful neighbours, instead, the ENP looks like a temporary substitute for something that the EU will in the long run not be in the position to deny. This is apparent in cases like Ukraine, whose EU membership aspirations have grown exponentially since last year's Orange Revolution, and are legitimate, following Art. 49 of the Treaty of the European Union. And while some analysts acknowledge the long-term nevitability of Ukraine's membership, the EU Commission prefers to stick to a possibly upgraded version of the ENP. As a result, instead of solving the security/integration dilemma, the ENP resembles just another attempt to buy Brussels some time, until the EU will no longer be able to postpone the membership question, e.g. for Moldova or Ukraine.
  A second, and not unrelated, peril of the ENP is contained in its very rationale of pursuing holism and differentiation, and most importantly in the interdependence between these two factors. Without a clear finalite, indeed, the ENP risks undermining the value of its own most innovative resources. The idea of a single policy framework for all neighbours is very ambitious since it presupposes a high degree of coordination and harmonisation of the proposed policy instruments. The ENPI constitutes the concrete measure devised to fulfill this ambition, but it remains for the time being a work in progress, whose bill and final structure remain to be defined. And apart from that - and some vague statements by the Commission - the holism of the ENP appears in dire need of more substance: What are, concretely, "the key cooperation objectives that are broadly valid for all"? And is Brussels really "offering the same opportunities across the wider neighbourhood"?13 The task is particularly daunting if one considers that the ENP also pursues differentiation. Given the striking heterogeneity and diversity of the various neighbours, differentiation is as fundamental a goal as holism. Yet, it also, and inevitably so, draws distinctions and calls for a more diversified 'hub-and-spoke' geometry, which may eventually work against holism itself, if it is not reconnected to a policy framework that is unambiguous as far as its ultimate objectives are concerned. A third shortcoming is the veiled unilateralism that pervades the ENP. Instead of being a policy with neighbours, as the initial lexicon seemed to imply, the ENP is a policy for neighbours or, rather, towards them. The mechanism here is that of conditionality, which takes place in two ways. On the one hand, there is the more traditional sectoral conditionality, which is the contractual relation where aid to neighbours is contingent on specific reforms. On the other hand, there is positive conditionality, under which, as Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner put it: "the further a partner is ready to go in taking practical steps to implement common values, the further the EU will be ready to go in strengthening our links with them." This, in principle, appears to encourage a sort of virtuous cycle to the partnership, which makes partners masters of their own integration destiny. The reality with positive conditionality, and in fact with conditionality in general, however, is that the EU places itself in a contractual position of almost exclusive control: It is Brussels that decides the meaning of 'common values'; Brussels decides whether or not, and to what extent, partners have taken 'practical steps' towards them; and it decides if and when it is time to strengthen links with them. This form of unilateralism may be justified by political and managerial reasons. After all, the ENP is emanating from, and financed by, Brussels, and conditionality is instrumental to benchmark progress of the partner countries and to facilitate the implementation of the policy. Conditionality, however, also imposes the more subtle quasi-imperial logic, which Brussels sometimes fails to grasp. This not only impinges heavily on the neighbours' progress, but also fundamentally alters the finality of the policy. Indeed, while the Commission stresses joint ownership, reciprocity and enhanced partnership as paramount innovations of the policy, conditionality defines criteria, draws limits and is bound to become the most stringent criterion of the ENP.
  These factors help to explain why the ENP in its current format appears inadequate to address the broad array of security and integration challenges that the EU is confronted with in its neighbours. Of no less importance, however, is the fact that this policy also fails to match the expectations of some of its neighbours. For the partners in the South Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Southern Caucasus, the ENP is a largely welcome development, because of their more limited prospects of further integration. Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Russia, on the other hand, have met the ENP with less enthusiasm or even open opposition. The cases of Ukraine and Moldova were referred to above when expounding the reasons for the ENP partnership/membership ambiguity. Lukashenka's Belarus is a case to be considered frozen for the time being (if one excludes the EU's promised support for the Belarusian civil society).
  Russia, instead, removed itself from the ENP from its outset because, on the one hand, it does not consider itself as 'a' mere neighbour but as a strategic partner, which deals with the EU from a position of equality. Moreover, Russia tacitly opposes enhanced relations between EU and its former Soviet Union neighbours, which Moscow still regards as its traditional sphere of influence.
  In keeping with the framework proposed here, most of the neighbours will perhaps agree that the EU is 'different' in the sense that it is neither a powerful superstate (which is how they all regard the United States) nor a looser regional UN-like network of cooperative security (which most of them have joined already through their membership in the OSCE and Council of Europe, not to mention the UN itself). However, they will explain the EU 'difference' less by the conceptual underpinnings of its post-modern power constellation than by the well-being and prosperity that the EU has managed to generate within its borders. The ENP, although it is designed to do so, fails to export this, and rather appears to export Brussels' own security and integration dilemmas. While some conditionality is unavoidable to push implementation, the ENP's vague promise of enhanced cooperation does not seem generous enough to justify painful EU-styled domestic reforms. On the other hand, Brussels' inability (or unwillingness) to
  Substantiate the finality of the ENP makes the policy resemble a loose security cordone sanitaire, rather than a strategy. The combination of the policy's quasi-imperial logic with its manifest inconsistency risks becoming a source of alienation from, rather than of attraction to, the EU.
 
  Enter Regionalism: Why?
  On the basis of these reflections on the challenges and perils of Europe's difference, this study suggests that the formation and development of transnational schemes of regional security and cooperation at the periphery of the enlarged EU can provide a valuable format to address the shortcomings of the EU neighbourhood strategy. The following sections will explain why this is so, where and to what extent regionalism has emerged in Europe's periphery, and, lastly, how regionalism should enter the EU neighbourhood strategy.
  The term 'region-building approach', originally coined by Norwegian scholar Iver B. Neumann,15 is a good reference point to unfold the more conceptual aspects of why regionalism is a valuable format to address the questions posed by the EU neighbourhood strategy. Regionbuilding is to be understood as the practice of actors constructing a region. Regions are generated by a variety of actors carrying out different political projects: they can emerge from outside and above - at the initiative of countries, international institutions, or more generally foreign policy elites or they can form from within and below, as a result of networking by grassroots movements, firms or sub-national authorities. Regions, especially in Europe, have characteristically been multi-level and multi-dimensional phenomena: they can form for unctionalistic, interest-based or community-building purposes, and can pursue goals as diverse as cultural cooperation, civil society development, trade or cooperative security in various sectors. These various options are, on the one hand, a testament to the increasingly post-national character of the European political arena and to the progressive 'de-territorialisation' of social interaction. On the other hand, they are also meant to suggest that, as this more fluid character of political interaction in the era of globalisation eventually 're-territorialises' to tackle practical questions, the regional framework, rather than the nation-state, emerges as a more suitable format of social aggregation in Europe's political space.
  Regionalism, in this sense, becomes a paramount example of 'difference'.16 It is a 'different' power representation because it does not necessarily build on the primacy of the nation states, but it defines a constellation that is not diluted in the global dynamic either. Regionalism emerges out of existing units (nation states, sub-national authorities, international organisations, etc.) and yet, it does not quite resemble any of them: it is not merely a functional practice meant to address the needs of its participants. But it is not about building a 'region state' either, because regions do not necessarily need to develop common norms and complex institutional arrangements in order to function. And still, by routinising political practices at the regional level, region-building generates a sui-generis form of political identification among its participants.
  For the purpose of this analysis, such 'new' conceptualisations of regionalism (as opposed to the 'old' functional state-centric, balance-of-power type) may thus contribute to overcome the dyadic divisions of European security and integration, as well as the shortcomings of the ENP.
  Regionalism is inclusive but not binding; multilevel but not anti-statist; 'European' but not necessarily 'EU-centric'. Going back to the perils that were identified above for the ENP, these features do not make regionalism ambiguous, quite simply because regionalism is a practice and a format and does not have a specific goal, e.g. EU integration. Functioning regionalism, as we will see, may achieve remarkable goals for its participants, but it is not necessarily designed to advance EU membership prospects. It is a henomenon on its own, decoupled from enlargement. The inherent diversity of regionalism favours cohesion and diversification at the same time. It provides the meeting place for variable geometries of social and political interaction; it can create a forum in which the various agendas of its various articipants can be pursued; and it can support the transition of some actors and prevent the exclusion of others, and thus reduce economic and social disparities within the region. Regions are, in other words, platforms that host multi-level, cooperative interdependence in its wider sense (e.g. environmental uestions, energy, migration, economic cooperation, confidence-building measures, etc.), thus becoming what Barry Buzan calls 'security complexes'. Lastly, regionalism is, almost by definition, not unilateral. Its openness contributes to a blurring of the distinction between inside and outside and favour spontaneous bilateral and multilateral interaction. And at the same time, it benefits from the participation of normally 'othering' actors, such as states and institutions - in casu, the EU - which provide strategies, visibility and funding to the regional projects. The EU has largely subscribed to such arguments. The very emergence of the European Communities can be regarded as an elaborated and sophisticated form of egion-building. Regionalism, therefore, has always constituted a remarkable feature of Brussels' neighbourhood strategy over the years, because it represents a way to encourage partners to follow the EU's own integration path. Brussels has thus promoted regional cooperation as an established modus operandi that underlies "the EU's own philosophy that deeper cooperation with neighbouring countries is a route to national as well as regional stability and growth and that such cooperation serves their mutual interests".
 
  Where?
  From this focus on the political construction of regions, it follows that the mapping of regionalism in Europe can become a rather contested exercise, since regional actors often identify with several, partly overlapping regions depending on how identity is construed and interests are formed, or on whether more contingent circumstances emerge. Hence, for instance, a country like Lithuania, normally considered part of the Baltic region, is often included by its policy-makers in the Central European region, mostly because of its historical and cultural ties to Poland; or it is attached by some analysts to the Eastern European region (i.e. the Western CIS countries), because of its recent Soviet past and because of foreign policy priorities in Ukraine or Belarus. Likewise, Turkey is at the confluence of the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Black Sea regions, and can identify with all of them. While acknowledging the limits of this exercise, therefore, the following sketch aims to map and problematise those regional patterns in the EU neighbourhood that are better established in the European political debate. Accordingly, five regional clusters can be identified in the post-2004 European neighbourhood:
  1. Northern Europe
  2. Mediterranean
  3. Balkans
  4. Black Sea Region and
  5. Eastern Dimension.
 
  How?
  In the March 2003 'Wider Europe' Communication by the Commission, which constitutes the first formulation of the ENP, the EU Commission stated that within the policy, "the EU must act to promote the regional and sub-regional cooperation and integration". More specifically, the Commission stated that "new initiatives to encourage regional cooperation between Russia and the countries of the Western NIS might [be] considered. These could draw upon the Northern Dimension concept to take a broader and more inclusive approach to dealing with neighbourhood issues." Other similar suggestions by the Commission have followed in 2004, together with more specific indications about policy priorities and financing.23 But these documents - and, arguably, a majority of existing analytical works - fail to systematise the considerable regionalist experience that the EU has acquired so far in its neighbourhood and to explain how regionalism should in practice enter the picture of the ENP.
  Before the inception of the ENP, EU support for regionalism in Europe's periphery has followed three broad trends:
  • The first and more straightforward approach has been that of supporting inside-out regional formations. In cases like the Baltics, Barents Sea region or, to a lesser extent, the Black Sea cooperation, the EU found established practices of regional cooperation. The fact that these regions formed at the initiative of local actors has its advantages and disadvantages for the EU. Most obviously, inside-out regionalism gives the EU opportunity and time to calibrate its role in, and support for, the region (this is testified to by the fact that the Northern Dimension was not formally established until the year 2000, and that the EU still does not participate in the work of the BSEC). In reality, however, with or without a full-scale involvement in the region, the EU is already heavily involved in each of its neighbouring regions in unilateral, bilateral or multilateral ways, and a lack of impetus to support insideout regionalism is often perceived by local actors as a lack of EU interest in the region (again, the BSEC case stands out). On the other hand, the existence of a caucus of regional actors acting in concert, often through regional institutions, may in some cases complicate the EU agenda in a given region. The region is thus no longer a forum of cooperation, but a counterpart, with its own agenda and goals. This has been especially the case in Northern Europe, where the existence of established regional institutions and a 'generous' candinavian core, has often made coordination of regional activities with the EU rather complicated, as the repeated calls for rationalisation and streamlining of cooperation confirm.
  • The second pattern of EU support for regionalism has been that of creating dimensions from the outside-in. This has been the case for the Northern Dimension, the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, and the Barcelona process. In these cases, the initiative comes primarily from the EU. The input of member or partner countries (such as Finland in the Northern Dimension) is fundamental and provides the region with a certain legitimacy locally, but the strategic, conceptual and managerial bulk of the work is done in Brussels. Such an approach has several advantages. First, an EU direct action gives the region a remarkable visibility on the European stage: Brussels contributes to put the region 'on the map', brings the discussion on the region right to the centre of the European forum and not least, provides funding. The EU direct involvement, moreover, brings Brussels' expertise and capabilities to the regions, which are important for handling the various tasks that the regional cooperation entails. Finally, the creation of 'dimensions' sends neighbours a clear signal: that, notwithstanding the nature and state of the bilateral relations with the individual states, the EU is committed to the well-being of the area as a whole. The minuses of the 'dimensionalist' approach are equally remarkable: for one, EU-promoted regionalism often risks giving local actors the impression that the establishment of an EU dimension equals a full-scale EU takeover of the region, which renders partners rather 'passive' (to some extent, this is what happened in the Mediterranean and the Balkans). Moreover, if Brussels' impetus in regionalising is more powerful than that of local actors, then the initiative risks becoming empty at its core and unsustainable in the long run. Secondly, the EU-centric regionalist logic often clashes with diverging interests among EU member states. This results in the formation of caucuses within the EU and in a weakening of the regional development. For example, the lack of support among Southern EU member states has limited progress of the Northern Dimension, while one of the reasons for the EU's poor regional involvement in the Black Sea and in the Eastern Dimension is the opposition of some Russia-friendly EU member states to a deeper EU engagement in the CIS space.
  • The third type of EU support for regionalism is that of sectoral dialogues. This approach is not exclusive, in the sense that it has most often been combined with one of the other two approaches. This is the case in several aid and financial assistance programmes like CARDS for the Balkans, MEDA for the Barcelona process, PHARE for pre-enlargement Central Europe or TACIS for the CIS countries. In sectoral dialogues, the way regional groupings are organised may be broader than the actual regional formation. Yet, the establishment of regional coordination and dialogue in e.g. energy, environment or various JHA-related fields provides the real substance to the regional framework. Less frequently, these sectoral dialogues constitute an approach on their own, which builds on, and somehow bypasses, other regional initiatives. This is the case for the so-called Northern Dimension 'Partnerships' in the fields of environment, public health and social well-being, and, to a lesser extent, of the INOGATE and TRANCECA networks in the Southeastern periphery. Admittedly, the specificity and technicalities of some of these schemes makes it difficult to regard them as 'dialogues', since the contacts are often limited to (and known by) the specific actors operating in each policy field. This notwithstanding, sectoral dialogues have constituted a major contribution to coordination and effectiveness in tackling EU and partner countries' common challenges at the regional level.
  What should the ENP derive from these three models? First, that they all constitute valuable tools to achieve the paramount goal of the EU Neighbourhood Policy. As controversial as Prodi's 'more than a partnership, less than a membership' adage may sound, this is precisely what regional cooperation is meant to contribute. Regionalism does not 'call on' actors, but is about inviting them to decide upon their degree of participation. Regionalism provides a flexible format to blur divisions between inside and outside, and places the onus on the partners to decide the pace of their own transition towards the inside, with no EU conditionality pressuring them to comply. Equally obvious is that all three models have the advantage of bypassing specific, and often sensitive, questions that the ENP is faced with in the hub-and-spoke bilateral dynamic. Regionalism is less burdened by conditionality than the mainstream bilateral component of the ENP framework, and therefore is a good tool to provide aid without compromising the EU's firm stands in some specific bilateral situations.
  In other words, no matter which of its three regional recipes the EU should test in the ENP, the basic rationale is that regionalism should be regarded as one part of a three-level strategy for the ENP. First, there is the bilateral Action Plans based on conditionality through which the EU aims to steer the partners' transition to democracy and market economy. Then, there is the overall single ENP structure, which provides cohesion and gives a more strategic outlook to the policy. In between, there is regionalism, which softens the obligations given by conditionality, facilitates their realisation, and constitutes a valuable stepping-stone to enhance the ENP's 'holism'.
  There is no ideal model the EU can follow when considering how to support regionalism in the ENP. Each region faces specific challenges and it may well be that a outside-in 'dimensionalist' model proves valuable in one region, while the support for 'inside-out regionalism' is more appropriate in another. For instance, the idea of an institutionalised Eastern Dimension could turn against the very idea of pushing regionalism in the Western NIS, because Russia would most likely oppose the EU-centric logic behind it. There are, however, five broad considerations that can be made to ponder a sound EU regional strategy in the neighbourhood.
  1) The region should be as inclusive as possible. The broadest range of actors - nongovernmental, business, local authorities, international institutions and donors - and all potential partners, including those who have normally proven more hostile to EU-centrism, should feel encouraged to participate and not be threatened by exclusion. This is in line with the ENP's original inspiration that stresses the importance of joint ownership and shared values. In this sense, whenever inside-out regionalism emerges, the ENP should substantially put its weight behind it.
  2) The EU should support the 'generous core' of member countries willing to push for certain regions. 'Generous' states in a region play a crucial role and usually have the lion's share in: defining priorities and putting issues of common interest on the agenda; gathering consensus among regional players; keeping up the momentum of the cooperation over time; fundraising; supporting the creation of regional institutions; and promoting the 'added value' of the region in and outside Europe. As noted, the problem with these 'leaderships' is that the existence of contrasting local interests within the EU has in the past led member states to obstruct each other: the need to find a balanced consensus or at least a tacit understanding within the European Council that all regions needs EU support, proportional to their needs and their strategic importance, is thus imperative.
  3) Regionalism in the EU neighbourhood should value the role of Russia. In the Russian case, what is at stake is not limited to the EU's quest for stability, or to the strengthening of its neighbourhood relations. When it comes to Russia, a strategic dimension is also at stake, because Russia plays a defining role in at least three of our five regions: the Northern, Eastern and Black Sea regions. Despite Moscow's fading influence on what it used to call its 'near abroad', Russia can still heavily affect developments in a number of contexts. Russia still has troops in Georgia and Moldova and claims to play the role of mediator in the frozen conflicts in these two countries; it continues to support Lukashenka's authoritarian
  regime in Belarus, and to represent a social and political force in Ukraine, despite the debacle on the occasion of the Orange Revolution; its outpost in Kaliningrad is a source of security concerns for the surrounding countries and the EU; not least, Russia is a major oil and gas supplier to the EU. The combination of these crucial questions naturally makes Russia's role in Europe's neighbourhood very important. The European Commission initially envisaged the ENP as a new pillar of the bilateral strategic partnership. This proposal, however, was rejected by Russia. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister V.A. Chizhov accounted for the reasons of this opposition, explaining that Russia has a neighbourhood doctrine of its own and that the ENP has the 'inherent conceptual deficiency' of grouping very different countries and has a too wide geographical reach.24 Brussels responded to these objections by suggesting that "Russia be offered support for implementing relevant parts of the strategic partnership from the proposed European Neighbourhood Instrument, in addition to existing forms of support." This is a rather common-sensical suggestion, especially because the ENPI will replace TACIS, from which Russia has benefited so far. This proposal, however, does not amount to a satisfactory answer when it comes to understanding ho the EU plans to step up its relations with CIS countries, while ignoring Russia's enduring role in these regions. Brussels could go ahead with enhancing its engagement with Ukraine, Moldova and the Southern Caucasus without involving Russia. Yet, a genuine EU commitment in these countries cannot be achieved without seriously tackling major outstanding issues, especially those relating to conflict resolution. In this context, the creation of well-funded regional dimensions could represent a low-profile, winwin strategy to engage Russia, which declares itself concerned with "the future of existing formats of regional cooperation where the EU is a participant - the Northern Dimension, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, the Barents/Euroarctic Council, the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, just to mention a few - as well as the future EU policy towards them, including the financial aspect".26 An upgrading and further support of regional activities in the ENP could thus provide a further channel of dialogue for the EU-Russia strategic partnership.
  4) Regionalism in the EU neighbourhood should initially focus on soft security. The case of Northern Europe is instrumental to explain this fourth recommendation. This case, in many respects, provides a remarkable example of the potential of regionalism, but also suggests that political and military aspects (e.g. the case of Kaliningrad and the question of the Russia-speaking minority in the Baltic States) have not been dealt with at the regional level and have tended to coalesce in the wider European framework. The regional framework of cooperation did remarkably well in defusing tensions, building confidence among actors and 'desecuritising' the handling of the issues at stake. Yet, it has proven fruitless in tackling 'hard' security questions, which have been mainly dealt with in the context of the EU-Russia bilateral cooperation. In this sense, military and political security has somehow perpetuated two of the more traditionalist logical dictums of European security: that of the centralising 'concentric circle' and the EU-Russia 'othering' one. On the other hand, as noted, regional cooperation has proven momentous to tackle soft-security matters like environmental security, public health, organised crime and economic cooperation. The recommendation for the other four regions is to follow the same path. The political and security basket has been the most unsuccessful one in the Euro-Mediterranean partnership.
  Likewise, a regional dimension could hardly contribute to resolve the Transdniestria or the Abkhazia questions, and it may well be unproductive to bring about domestic changes in Belarus or Libya. Yet, by providing an inclusive milieu dealing successfully with environmental, economic and civil security matters, regionalism could build the kind of confidence and favour people-to-people contacts also in the rest of the neighbourhood. The Northern European experience suggests that although regionalism may not solve the most sensitive and thorny military and political security issues, it brings about the kind of dialogue and inclusion that is conducive to a more politicised - and less securitised - approach by actors that can in the long run spill over to hard-security matters by other means.
  5) The EU should elaborate a new generation of regional Action Plans. Besides the more conceptual considerations on their social construction, it was argued that the existence of common interests is also what drives the emergence of regions. The existence of functional types of regional sectoral dialogues that address these common interests thus constitutes a fundamental pillar on which to structure regionalism in the ENP, especially at the level of management and implementation. In most cases, the EU has already identified in which regions and in which sectors these more functional concerns reside. Financial instruments currently addressing regionalism in the EU neighbourhood, such as MEDA or TACIS, follow such a rationale. The ENP will replace existing financial instruments with the ENPI, which fits nicely with the regional thesis expounded here especially in relation to the possibility to finance both inside and outside the EU. Yet, the Commission has so far not explained in detail how the ENPI will replace the regional component of existing instruments, or create new ones for that purpose. In principle, the so-called 'Second Window' within the ENPI will be devoted to multilateral projects within the ENP. This study recommends that a more marked regional focus is given to this second window.
 Susanne Milcher, Ben Slay
 
 "THE ECONOMICS OF THE 'EUROPEAN NEIGHBOURHOOD POLICY': AN INITIAL ASSESSMENT."
  Paper prepared for "Europe after the Enlargement" conference (Warsaw, April 8-9, 2005)
 
  Possible impact of ENP
  Can the ENP help to replicate the Central European transition successes in the new neighbour countries? Will the 'market access for reform' bargain implied by the ENP lead to dramatic Improvements in market access, export-oriented FDI, restructuring, and modernisation?
  Optimists on these points must face two key questions. First, the neighbourhood countries are poorer and more heterogeneous than the Central European countries. This is apparent both in economic issues (per-capita GDP levels, overall size, structural characteristics) and political terms. A successful 'market access for reform' bargain for Moldova would ecessarily look different than one for the Russian Federation. Second, the ENP is unlikely to be seen as a fully satisfactory substitute for eventual EU membership - particularly by reformist governments (e.g., Ukraine after the 'orange revolution') who are most likely to desire accession. Both of these factors are likely to weaken to the stabilising effect of the 'European anchor'.
  For the 'market access for reform' bargain to work, the economic benefits of the ENP must be seen to be positive and significant. Previous experiences with the extension of the single market to non-EU countries, such as Norway, Switzerland, or Liechtenstein, offer hope in this respect. However, the neighbourhood countries have lower quality infrastructure, lower per-capita GDPs, and much greater political risk. This increases the importance of other elements of the ENP, particularly financial assistance and infrastructure development especially in the energy and transport sectors)19. Likewise, European integration for these economies could have some downsides, particularly in terms of trade diversion, but also (particularly for Azerbaijan) the possibility of further specialisation in the export of raw materials that can mean heightened vulnerability to terms-of-trade shocks, as occurred in 1998.
  Economic policy, trade and the single market
  The ENP could bring substantial efficiency and welfare gains to neighbouring countries via liberalized access to the single market. Legal changes in the areas of customs and financial services should promote trade facilitation and business creation. Better market access, ombined with enhanced dialogue and cooperation on social and employment policies, could encourage reforms directed at reducing poverty and increasing the effectiveness of social assistance.
  The bilateral EU association agreements concluded with the Central European countries in 1991, which provided asymmetric access to the single market for Central European exporters, may be instructive in this respect. In addition to encouraging rapid growth in trade overall and towards the EU in particular, the association agreements (combined with ambitious privatisation programmes) promoted significant FDI inflows, attracted by 'export platform' possibilities.
  While this pattern seems now to be taking hold in Southeast European countries now negotiating for EU membership, it may be less replicable in the countries of the Western CIS and the Caucasus. Thanks to their accession and SAP agreements with the EU, the Southeast European countries already enjoy preferential access to the single market (relative to CIS countries). During the past few years the Southeast European countries have attracted significant FDI inflows, many of which came from EU -focused companies. However, recent increases in FDI in the Western Balkans appear to be largely due to progress in privatisation programmes. This also means that FDI in the Western Balkans is likely to involve restructuring and hence job losses21. By contrast, most FDI in the new EU member states is of the green field variety, and hence more likely to be job-creating. The Southeast European economies have the opportunity to experience this phase in the next few years. In Romania, thanks largely to FDI, the share of machinery and transport equipment in total exports (22%) now exceeds the share of textiles and clothing in total exports (20%)22. On the other hand, intra-Balkan trade remains heavily dependant on local developments, since intra-regional trade accounts for a large share of exports in this sub-region. By contrast (c.f. Figure 5), privatisation in CIS countries has generally been focused on sales to domestic investors, and Russian capital or 'round tripping' domestic capital typically plays a large role in the relatively small FDI that has come in. Perhaps for this reason, significant changes in the commodity composition of exports have yet to be registered. In Moldova, for example, food products and textiles account for almost 50% of total exports, while mineral products and machinery and equipment take up almost 40% of total imports23. The end of preferential access to markets in Poland and other Central European countries that came with their May 2004 EU membership will result in at least some trade diversion: losses for Ukrainian producers are estimated at about 1% of exports in 2004-2005. Whether improved market access and greater support for market reforms that could come with the ENP will be sufficient to generate a breakthrough in this respect remains to be seen.
  The ENP's focus on energy safety and security (as is explained in the Communication on the development of energy policy for the enlarged European Union, its neighbours and partner countries) is a potential opportunity for the new neighbours, both energy producers (Russia, Azerbaijan) and energy transporters (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Azerbaijan). The national action plans will build on existing bilateral or regional energy and transport initiatives, such as the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, the Inogate Programme dealing with the Caspian basin, the TRASECA transport project, and the South-East Europe Regional Energy Market. These initiatives have helped establish a roadmap for institutionalised partnership, with concrete measures to harmonise the legal and regulatory framework for energy sectors. Increased energy efficiency, the use of renewable energy, and cooperation in energy technologies are also promoted by these programmes.
 
  Cross-border issues
  The ENP seeks to improve the transport infrastructure connecting the enlarged Union with neighbouring countries, to develop the information society (in keeping with the Lisbon Agenda), to include the neighbouring countries in the EU's research area, and to promote good environmental governance in neighbouring countries. This is particularly important in the case of river and other ecosystems that overlap the EU's new eastern frontier, and in light of the new neighbours' inexperience in effective trans-border environmental governance. For example, the Tisza river basin, which connects Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Union of Serbia and Montenegro, has well-preserved rural landscapes, vast complexes of natural forests, and important biodiversity resources. It also suffers from numerous pollution hotspots, declining heavy industry, lagging economic development, high unemployment levels, emerging patterns of regular flooding, and other tensions linked to the legacies of communism and problems of transition. The ENP could facilitate better trans-national management of the Tisza river basin.
  The HIV/AIDS epidemic that is emerging in the Western CIS countries (particularly in Ukraine and Russia) - as well as in Estonia - is another serious cross-border challenge that is not addressed in the ENP.
  Prevalence rates by the end of 2001 in these countries were at about 1% of the adult opulations - the level at which the epidemic began to spin out of control in some African countries. (By contrast, prevalence rates in Western Europe at the end of 2001 averaged 0.3%, and were below 0.1% in Central European countries. UNAIDS estimated that some 1 million people were living with HIV in Russia at the end of 2003 and the virus continues to spread rapidly in Belarus and Moldova. In addition to the high prevalence rates already recorded in Estonia, there is evidence that HIV incidence is also growing rapidly in Latvia and Lithuania25. HIV/AIDS trends are trans-boundary and the enlarged EU cannot avoid facing this problem.
  Instead, it should promote the same values and reforms that helped the new member states to effectively respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. These include democratisation, the modernisation of state structures, and the empowerment of individuals and NGOs, which have promoted the good governance and the grass roots social and behavioural changes needed to combat the epidemic.
 
  Governance
  The ENP could help to strengthen political dialogue in the areas of security, conflict prevention and crisis management, border management, migration, visa policies, and organised crime. The ENP offers a possible framework for greater international involvement in Moldova's Transnistria. Likewise, the inclusion of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in the ENP could increase the EU's role in the potential resolution of the disputes in the Caucasus.
  In addition to political stability, institutional capacity is key to development. The new neighbours still face major challenges in modernising state institutions, particularly in terms of decentralisation and public administration reform. Imperfections in governance in turn prevent the emergence of the market friendly state structures needed for improved business and investment climates. Major obstacles are associated with taxation systems and high corruption levels (cf. Table 1), which generate large informal sectors. Migration, which can be a key engine of European growth, is now receiving growing attention in the European Union. Some studies have found that immigrants in the US produce 4.5 times more in the US than in their country of origin with the same skill level. They benefit from extra and more advanced physical capital and capable institutions that allow them to perform at higher levels of productivity. Remittances from migrants can contribute to development in the home country if they are used locally to start-up small enterprises without providing long-term finances27. Remittances also make major positive contributions to the balance of payments in virtually all the new neighbour and West Balkan countries, rivalling (if not exceeding) levels of official development assistance (and in some cases FDI).
 
  Conclusion
  The impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy will ultimately depend on its influence on economic development in the new neighbours. So far, it is easier to find reasons for skepticism than optimism. Although the ENP seeks to ease trade restrictions through the implementation of legislative approximation and convergence with EU standards, prospects of access to the EU's single market seem rather far away. The same would therefore apply to the FDI needed to transform the economies of the Western CIS and the Caucasus. The lack of measures to promote increased labour migration between the new neighbours and the enlarged EU may also be something of a missed opportunity. On the plus side, access to the single market could improve significantly under the ENP. Likewise, the new European Neighbourhood Instrument can add more coherence in technical assistance, and provide more financial support for creating capacities for trade infrastructures and institutional and private sector development. Whether these benefits will be sufficient to push recalcitrant reformers to adopt robustly European policy agendas remains to be seen. Government interest in reforms seems likely to depend largely on eventual prospects for EU membership. The ENP does little to remove fears in this respect. Indeed, its emerging role as substitute for EU membership could make the ENP ineffective-if not counterproductive.
  It is not clear that the countries of the Western CIS and the Caucasus will be motivated by prospects of an eventual stake in the single market, or of some easing of visa restrictions.
  Fundamentally, the neighbourhood policy has yet to show what it is meant to be. It could be a modest mechanism for mitigating the unfavourable effects of the enlargement for border regions. It could also be an attempt to motivate a serious 'Europeanisation', in the sense of political, economic and societal transformation of neighbouring states. As one observer noted: 'the optimist can say that this is a case of a glass half full, rather than half empty. At least the glass has been constructed, it is reasonably transparent, and more can be poured into the container in due course.
 
 
 СЕВЕРНОЕ ИЗМЕРЕНИЕ ЕС: КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНАЯ МОДЕЛЬ ИЛИ РЕГИОНАЛЬНАЯ ВАРИАЦИЯ?
 Pertti Joenniemi, Alexander Sergunin
 
 RUSSIA AND THE EUROPEAN UNION'S NORTHERN DIMENSION. ENCOUNTER OR CLASH OF CIVILISATIONS?
 Nizhny Novgorod, 2003
 
  Conclusions
  The NDI has experienced a relatively slow start. It is still quite far from the initial ideas expressed by the Finnish Prime Minister in the context of launching the initiative. This does not imply, however, that region-building, network governance and various bottom-up type of processes would come to a halt in Europe's northern corner. By contrast, they are quite likely to continue.
  This is so, among other things, as the role of the EU and its NDI has been that of enabling rather than one of driving and directing to start with. The European Union stands out as an important co-actor and facilitator being thereby able to link in and make use of the energy and creativeness entailed in the process but there are also significant region-specific actors with policies and aspirations of their own. The contest that has emerged in the context of the recent encounter between the EU and northern Europe has forced the EU to develop various new ideas. Most recently they have emerged, for example, in the form of an e-Northern Dimension, the environmental partnership, schemes for region-wide energy policies, formulating joint terms of trade for Europe's North or ideas pertaining to the transforming of the Baltic Sea into a 'fast lane' in the sphere of shipping. More generally, processes have been set into motion that in the longer run are bound to lead to the creation of a region-specific agenda as well as endeavours to implement it.
  The Union has provided encouragement and has worked as a model in the post-bipolar era due to its magnetism and attractiveness, but this does not seem to imply that the Union itself would have had a single policy and a well co-ordinated determination aiming at transforming the previously rather non-regionalised and strictly delineated northern Europe into an increasingly 'fuzzy' or 'postmodern' political landscape. Intermediate spaces abound and there is considerable fluidity in the region, although much of this has seen the light of the day without any distinct EU leadership.
  The EU constitutes an important player and one interested in the European North but it may yet be noted that the pursuance of region-building has been challenging also for the Union. There are distinct limits to its actorness in the sphere of 'foreign affairs' in general and in particular in view of developing and pursuing innovative policies of networking governance. An improved performance and the distilling of a distinct line would require, it seems, essential modifications in the very nature of the Union. They include measures such as a co-ordination between the different pillars, settling a variety of institutional rivalries, establishing clearly more horizontal departures and a further blurring of the boundaries between internal and external policies. These are highly difficult matters to sort out, and this notwithstanding that the Union is, as such, based on multilevel governance and it is meant to be a post-sovereign polity. Already the complexities inherent in the cross-pillar formulation require a price, one that is also visible in the pursuit of subregional integration and the shortcomings of the NDI. The institutional rivalries between the Council of the EU and the Commission over competencies in the sphere of external relations imply, in some of their aspects, that the mandate of the Commission is bound to remain unclear, including also the relationship to and actorness in entities such as the Council of Baltic Sea States, the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and Arctic Council. There are restrictions in the delegation of power, establishment of relations beyond the bilateral ones as well as problems entailed in the usage of financial instruments that in some cases hamper rather than promote the spurring of subregional co-operation.
  All this provides substance to that the Union's engagement tends to be short term, ad hoc and often inconsistent (Johansson, 2002:390). Instead of a firm visions there appears to different constellations of interests and concerns (Hyde-Price, 2002:58). There is ground for accusations pertaining to passiveness and half-heartedness or the claim that the Union's potential in northern Europe remains underutilized (Haukkala, 2001:20). The list of problems, shortcomings, matters to be remedied and failed endeavours is actually rather long. It purports the image that the Union has fallen short of expectations, and the fate of the NDI might be seen as bringing this out with particular clarity. To a large degree the Union remains built on compartmentalised thinking: the tree pillars, the sectored DCs and the individual programmes devised mainly on regional basis but without engagement in the type of horizontal coordination that would be required by the NDI (Haukkala, 2001:114). In general, it seems that the EU has acquired a significant role in contributing to regionally in the European North but at the same time it remains profoundly challenged by such a development.
  Yet the Union has achieved, despite a variety of difficulties, a leading role and Europe's North stands out as an area where subregional cooperation has been taken, over a short period of time, exceptionally far. The development has its ups and downs but the unfolding of intermediate spaces, networking and bottom-up configurations is bound to continue. In a sense, the lack of a coherent policy and the abstention from riding on one logic only are part of the endeavour. Integrating the European North into the Union's normal policies would bring with a number of benefits in terms of clarity, legal status, degree of commitment etc., but it would not suffice and meet the needs of the region itself. The northern 'laboratory' requires and mandates experimentation. It challenges existing institutional, legal, transactional and cultural boundaries within the Union and calls for policies beyond the ordinary. An ability to modify a number of established boundaries - without extending formal membership - would furnish the Union with additional actorness in the sphere of network governance. It would further bolster the ethos underlying the NDI for example in the form of allowing actors external to the EU to participate in various processes in which policies relevant also for the Union itself are being discussed and formed.
  In fact, it is possible to argue that network governance has been taken so far in northern Europe that the various boundaries, limitations and constraints also within the EU itself have turned clearly visible. A variety of contradictions and paradoxes stand out. The requirement for success is often -and this comes out with particular clarity in the dealings with Russia and Russia's North-western regions - that there exists an ability to compromise and go beyond departures that are a 'must' seen from the perspective of the EU's standard policies. Without such ability there would be no true dialogue, an encounter between equals, or a subregional form of multilevel governance in any other form than one strictly subordinated to the EU's leadership. The division between policy-making and policy-taking prevails if the EU's only approach would consist of formulating programmes of its own. In some ways, it would be rather tempting to apply to the North the programmes similar to those pursued in the Mediterranean and in the context of the Barcelona process. They would for many observers make more sense than the NDI, an initiative plagued by considerable vagueness.
  Yet it is obvious that resorting to a more ordinary strategy would bring with it standardisation, a weakening of a multilevel approach and perhaps also loosing touch with a broad variety of non-governmental actors. It would constitute a projection of pre-set policies and demands of homogeneity placed upon actors and spheres not yet within the EU's domain. This is to say that the lack of coherent policies also has its positive sides. The Union stands to benefit from that it is not perceived as an ordinary political actor and a regional 'major power1 furnished with a ready-made set of interests and policies but one that is more in tune with the special requirements of Europe's North. The 'fuzzy' features of the region may be conducive to the pursuing of a flexible form of integration that allows the application of different policies in different regions, including the transcending of important boundaries by allowing for solutions that are more than association but less than membership applied in a region-specific context. This goes against a modern logic calling for clarity, harmony and unambiguous co-ordination, but it is perhaps precisely this modern logic that has to be dethroned also in sorting out the paradoxes of the EU's policies to the North and in the context of the NDI. The approaching enlargement may imply that the position of regionality is in general strengthened within the Union, and that would in turn imply the Europe's North gains feature's of a region from which to learn about mistakes as well as achievements on the road towards a kind of Europe of 'Olympic Rings'.
  It is in any case obvious that the spatial markers defining Europeanness have been blurred. They have turned more dispersed than previously and even peripheral actors seem to be able insert some influence. In addition to two previously dominant markers of the East and the West, space has been opened up for a third one. Markers of space such a northernness are no longer centrally controlled. They are not as strictly predefined as before. It seems that there is no single, dominant authority legitimised to 'draw' the map - or to propose a check-list of criteria that will assure entry into 'Europe'.
  Instead there appears to be a miscellaneous polyphony in respect to the "northern sphere" (cf. Jukarainen, 1999). This constitutes the opening that Finland has utilised in launching its Northern Dimension initiative, an opening which also bolsters the position of Russia in allowing to join in, if it so wants, as one of the voices part-taking in the dialogue that frames the post-Cold War Europe. In addition to consolidating its position in the post-Cold War context, Russia is offered the option of contributing and getting engaged in the forging of an increasingly regionality-based politico-economic landscape. This has not been easy, taking into account that Russia has for some time viewed such processes with suspicion. The reading has sometimes been that such endeavours are there to further marginalise Russia's influence and stir difficulties in the relationship between the core and the more peripheral areas. However, more recently a more positive approach to regional co-operation has become apparent. Russia has been able to coin at least some initiatives of its own, and has in general turned into a subject with a variety of views and positions. It clearly endeavours at being engaged and • not excluded from the current that essentially influence the new Europe.
  It has turned evident, within that context, that staying with the promise of the EU not to create new borders but to knock down the existing ones, constitutes a rather demanding task. The 'partnership' outlined within the NDI has not been as extensive as it initially sounded, although the initiative operates mainly in an inclusive manner. The previous bifurcated discourse casting the North as something quite different than - and perhaps even opposite to - 'Europe' has by and large come to a halt. Both the concepts of 'North' and 'Europe' are in the midst of considerable change. They have been imbued, in the more recent discourse, with new meanings. Northernness seems - due to a conceptual metamorphosis - to expand, assume a more autonomous position and increase in political relevance as a signifier of 'Europe'.
  In being de-bordered, the North may reach beyond its previous boundaries. It may acquire new meanings and turn less entrenched. The dominant images pertain to connectedness rather than isolation. It does not shrink and turn into a image of the more central areas - as might be expected on the basis modernity conquering and covering ever larger parts - but expands by regaining lost ground. It is hence something rather difficult to discipline and co-opt. Images of the North are not just coloured by the short summers and darkness, i.e. some negativities if the conditions are to be compared with those prevailing at the more southern latitudes, but also by long winters with plenty of snow. It is these deviants and somewhat undefined features that now often attract interest and may even invite a positive reading. Being linked to northernness carries with it the promise that there might still be something adventurous, unexplored and new to be discovered also within the EU and Europe itself.
  Moreover, northernness does not just qualify some fringe locations. It increasingly stands out, as indicated by the Northern Dimension, as one of the defining elements of europeanness. In doing so, northernness further undermines representations of any strictly unicentred Europe/EU and adds to the credibility of a variegated one. Northernness may be located in the context of a concentric Europe by providing shape to the outer circles and pushing the circles outwards, but it fits even better the figure of a 'Europe of regionalizes'. The marker is elevated into a representation increasingly on par with many others in the struggle about the essence of the European Union, one that is less pre-given, authentic and natural and a Union that seems able to combine a certain uniformity with emphases on diversity, pluralism and difference. It would, in this perspective, be one of the steps taken in order to liberate Europe from the politics of modernity and to set in on a postmodern road.
  By operating in terms of inclusion, the NDI challenges images of the EU as a fortress. The issues of connectivity soften the figure of a Schengen- Europe, and various other security-related Europes with strict and tightly controlled external borders. A strictly bordered Europe is complemented - if not contrasted - with conceptualisations of a Europe with a rather fuzzy north-eastern border by strives to open up for a free movement of capital, services, goods and people. The North is, in the context of the EU, depicted as a meeting-ground rather than a marker of outer boundaries and a site of frontier mythology. Instead of marking an outer limit it aims at bridging entities that have been seen as being apart from each other. More particularly, the distinction between members and non-members within the EU gets relativised as the Northern Dimension attaches considerable importance to the Union's co-operation with non-members, among these Russia. However, the concept does not only apply to the Union's external sphere. It also qualifies some aspects of the inside and stands out, more generally, as a representation that could achieve considerable impact on the Union as a whole. It seems to apply particularly to the outer circles but may also be broader in reach. Yet the core seems to accept, as indicated by the approval of the European Council and the various ministerial meeting that have been held since, northernness as one of the parameters for europeanness. Europe-making has obviously moved some steps to the North, but the steps taken may be just the beginning of a longer and more far-reaching process.
  The core may find some attraction in adding northernness to the attributes of 'Europe'. A centuries old image is reinvented to organise the post-Cold War Europe. The future is structured with a rather selective and strictly controlled use of labels that pertain to the past. Northernness is thrown into the debate to complement and compete with other images that also aim at utilising the space that has been opened up by the demise of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet Union. It would, however, be an exaggeration to argue that the move has been initiated by the core itself or that it reflects some themes that are close to the heart of the centre. The origin of the NDI hardly resides with the core. The increased centrality of northernness does not seem to stand out as a kind of take-over and a reflection of the power of the core to cover and impose meanings on spheres previously beyond its reach. This would not be a truthful interpretation of the formative phase of the initiative.
  It seems to have an even more interesting background. The Northern Dimension appears to be rather unique in having been coined close to the periphery, with Finland having grasped the opportunity to influence the European setting. The move has been carried out by exploiting an unconventional theme and the leverage provided by the Finnish and Swedish memberships, and more particularly the Finnish EU Presidency during the last part of 1999. Instead of utilising discourses already firmly anchored in the centre, Finland has chosen to initiate a new one that rests on a celebration of plurality, variety and de-bordering. A previous negativity has been - after some soul-searching - provided with new and emancipatory meaning. Northernness has been made, by a policy of naming, into an asset to be exploited in the contest between different 'Europes'.
  The consequences may be far-reaching despite that the initiative has been introduced in a rather soft and conciliatory manner. Any signs of a frontal clash have been avoided, and instead northernness has been presented as something rather apolitical, innocent and a 'natural' theme to be addressed once the EU gets extended, with the incorporation of two quite northern members. It has been offered as something complementary and purported as a principle applicable in the margins, off-centre. The strategy chosen may yet turn out to be rather significant as the figure of 'Europe' can also be influenced by engaging oneself in a process of defining what it's periphery is about. Finland appears to be able to do this by applying a certain historical legacy of accepting its own position at the fringes and combining an active peripherality with endeavours of getting access to the centre. It is this duality, or playing it double, which makes Finland and its resort to northernness particularly interesting.
  By introducing northernness as one of the defining elements of the European configuration, Finland has undoubtedly been able to strengthen images that are to its own liking. Northernness is now used by those within its sphere instead of representing an outsider's view of the other - as has been the case historically. Being part of a European Union with strong northern elements makes membership much more attractive, acceptable and rewarding. The European Union is not just ready-made and western in character. It turns less foreign once it can be credibly argued to contain aspects that one may also recognise - at a closer look - in oneself. This makes it more easy to justify the policies pursued to national audiences in the member countries, but perhaps also in those countries in the Northern part of Europe standing of the threshold of closer relations with the EU as well as Russia which has to link in without the prospect of membership.
  An enhanced standing of northernness - if this turns out to be the result that the process initiated yields - in the context of the EU, significantly lowers Finland's threshold to Europe. The same could potentially apply to Russia. The marker also provides linkages that the neighbouring countries may use in approaching Europe and the EU, therewith elevating the importance of region-building in Europe's North. Instead of being just 'there', Europe is also 'here'. It is on the spot. The distance between 'here' and 'there' is made to shrink in the sphere of markers of political space as the EU turns somewhat more de-centred. Consequently, the northern actors may feel that their prospects for being related to the core, and even more importantly, their changes of influencing what the overall configuration is about and how it is thematised, have grown.
  An essential aspect of the process entails that Russia is treated in inclusive terms. It is invited to join and change emphasis from a traditional political-military agenda to an economic-commercial one. It is invited to develop its own northern parts as a resource for partaking in European policies - and not due to a contest or power-political antagonism which used to be one of the reasons underlying Russian or Soviet emphasis on the northern areas. The linkages may be restrained, according to some of the interventions, to pipelines transporting oil and gas. However, in the longer run the contacts are bound to deepen in a manner that connects the Russian economy and enterprises with an integrated EU-Europe. This will inevitably open up rather profound questions about the role and significance of the North for Russia and raise questions about models of development. The Russian rather centralised model - based on traditions of geo-strategic and realist modes of thinking - will be challenged by the Nordic, Canadian or US models in approaching northernness and northern areas.
  So far there has been little discussion along these lines, but the questions are looming large and will have to be tackled sooner or later. Participation in the reconstruction of 'Europe' in a much more open and diverse ways invites also a discussion on the figure of Russia and the type of 'Europes' preferable from a Russian perspective. So far the interventions have remained, with some exceptions, rather traditional. The aspirations for subjectivity and equality have predominantly been restrained to a realist and geopolitical framework, and this has most often also constituted the background for interpreting and reacting to the NDI. It seems that regionalism and trans-regionalism in a European sense and linking in with more postmodern form of political space still take place in Russia only in some exceptional cases, namely in the regions that are deeply engaged in international co-operation - the Russian Northwest, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Tatarstan, Samara, etc. On the Russian socio-cultural-economic map these regions look as tiny islands of globalisation in the ocean of modernity rather than solid continents (Makarychev, 2000).
  There has, however, been some plurality present in the debate and there are voices also in the Russian debate representing interpretations that could furnish, if applied in the formulation of the policies pursued, Russia with considerable subjectivity in the contest between the various 'Europes'. In this regard Russia's Northwest is a special region where new models can be explored and non-traditional solutions can be suggested.
  Moreover, one could perhaps argue that the introduction and installation of a marker of northernness implies that Russia is no longer a homogeneous whole defined by a certain co-constitutive relationship between the East and the West (the Russian zeal) but there would be more differentiation with northernness being applicable particularly to the north-western part of Russia, thus signalling the formation of some mega-regions.3 It would be part of a differentiation with the more European parts of Russia defining and distinguishing itself with the help of the northern marker. Perhaps the latter can also provoke a process of redefinition of other spatial markers - eastern and southern ones that seem to acquire both new meanings and importance in present-day Russia. In fact, Russia has already got several faces and identities - European, West Asian, Central Asian, East Asian, an inner-looking one and so on. The northern 'face' is only one of many Russia's identities and such a multiple identity is actually helpful, it seems, in dealing with numerous problems and challenges of a postmodern world.
  In general, Europe appears to be less closed and predetermined. Meaning is no longer pre-given in the way it used to be. Aspirations for homogeneity provide - paradoxically - space for heterogeneity. The overall configuration is not to be defined just at the core and by the core alone. There is increased space for some of the more peripheral actors to influence the constitutive rules and frames of reference. These actors may contribute, in their own way, to the establishment of some of the key attributes defining what 'Europe' is about. They can, in the best of cases, interfere with the contest between the major markers and cognitive frames that influence the way their own identity unfolds. They may utilise some of the elements used in that process by imposing their meaning on the broader European constellations. They do not have to restrict themselves to contests about centrality as there is also the option of redefining and using peripherality as a resource. The core may retain - or even increase - its power in some spheres, but the periphery appears to have been able to challenge - as indicated by the NDI - the formation of what constitutes a relevant marker at least in some respects.
  This is yet another sign of that the constitutive rules underpinning the formation of political space seem - perhaps due to the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, but also because of some more general factors such as the new power relations of the 'information age' - to be changing significantly. The North could - in an uneasy alliance with the South - become one of the key markers of europeanness whereas the West and the East may lose some of their previous ground.
  The latter ones could retreat to positions that they had prior to the Second World War, or their demise could be even more profound. What seems to be at least equally important is that the new spatial markers allow for configurations out of the ordinary. The new could be seen as growing in the cracks of the current, concentric order. It is accepted, maybe even stimulated by the prevailing one because it is seen as a positive kind of difference, one that is bound to remain harmless and insignificant. But at some point quantity may turn into quality, and the driving logic of the configuration may find a new source. The Northern Dimension could, against this background, be seen as being part of a broader set of experimenting with principles that initially co-existed with the prevailing concentric figure, but one that also has the potential to begin to shape the European configuration quite significantly in the direction of a far more de-centred constellation.
 Алексей Разумихин
 
 БОЛЬНОЙ СКОРЕЕ ЖИВ, ЧЕМ МЕРТВ. OКОНЧАТЕЛЬНЫЙ ДИАГНОЗ "СЕВЕРНОМУ ИЗМЕРЕНИЮ" СТАВИТЬ ЕЩЕ РАНО
 Аналитическая записка БИЦ (27.09.2005)
 
  "Северное измерение" - программа взаимодействия Европейского союза с Россией. Когда-то "Северное измерение" было программой развития сопредельных с ЕС территорий на побережьях Балтийского и Баренцева моря, однако после того, как Польша и прибалтийские страны вступили в ЕС, единственной страной - не членом Евросоюза в регионе осталась Россия.
  Однако задолго до 1 мая 2004 года и в России, и в самом Европейском союзе раздавались голоса, критиковавшие "Северное измерение". Критики говорили, что у программы нет конкретной цели, что программа требует денег, а идут они неизвестно на какие проекты, и это притом, что в существуют еще несколько региональных организаций, ставящих своей целью интеграцию в регионе Балтийского моря (Совет государств Балтийского моря) или в арктическом регионе (Арктический совет, Совет Баренцева /Евроантарктического региона).
  Признавая справедливость большинства обвинений, следует все-таки заметить, что в рамках "Северного измерения" состоялся ряд таких проектов, которые можно без сомнения признать и значимыми и удачливыми. 22 сентября с.г. в Санкт-Петербурге состоится церемония торжественного открытия Юго-Западных очистных сооружений. Важность этого события будет подчеркнута присутствием в Северной столице премьер-министра Швеции Йорана Перссона, президента Финляндии Тарьи Халонен и Владимира Путина. Лидеры трех государств проведут встречу, на которой будет обсуждаться будущее программы "Северное измерение". Ни Финляндии, ни Швеции невыгодно окончание программы, да и президент России перед очевидным доказательством работоспособности "Северного измерения" будет склонен поддержать его дальнейшее развитие. Так что хоронить программу развития сотрудничества на Севере рано.
  Финляндия - родина "Северного измерения"
  Авторство программы сотрудничества на севере Европы "Северное измерение" принадлежит председателю финского парламента Пааво Липпонену, бывшему премьер-министру Финляндии. В конце девяностых годов прошлого века Липпонен выступил с циклом статей и устных выступлений о сотрудничестве на европейском севере. Программа действий Липпонена всем понравилась, и под придуманным им названием "Северное измерение" стала частью программ ЕС. Так как авторство бывшего премьер-министра Финляндии в программе "Северное измерение" уже забыто, часто забывают, что именно говорил Пааво Липпонен.
  Зато очень много критикуют программу "Северное измерение" как лоббисткий проект североевропейских стран, стремившихся забрать из бюджета деньги, направленные на развитие сопредельных регионов ЕС. У Евросоюза существует программа развития отношений со странами Средиземноморья, по которой значительные финансовые средства получают Испания, Италия, Франция и Португалия. "Северное измерение" в ЕС воспринимали как своего рода справедливый реванш североевропейских стран за то, что в течение 5 лет они были вынуждены субсидировать развитие португальско-марокканских, испано-алжирских и франко-тунисских отношений.
  Однако Пааво Липпонен, когда выступал с идеей "Северного измерения", говорил, прежде всего, о том, что для реализации программы сотрудничества не потребуется дополнительных средств. По идее Липпонена, в регионе Балтийского моря уже достаточно было разного рода финансовых программ. Действительно, в регионе ЕС реализовывал достаточно обеспеченные денежными средствами программы сотрудничества ТАСИС и ФАРЕ, в рамках Арктического совета, Совета государств Балтийского моря и Совета Баренцева /Евроантарктического региона деньги также тратились на интеграционные проекты государств. Идея Липпонена была только в том, чтобы все эти программы получили бы единую крышу, и могли бы координироваться из единого центра. Однако все получилось не так, как задумывал премьер-министр Финляндии.
  Программу "Северного измерения" взял под свою опеку Европейский союз. И сразу же на программу обрушились все обвинения, которые обычно падают на сам Евросоюз. Брюссель выделил собственный бюджет "Северному измерению", и это оказалось поводом обвинить программу в неоправданных тратах. Решения по выделению средств в рамках программы стали принимать в Брюсселе, и поэтому ее стали обвинять в излишней бюрократизации. При этом заявленная цель "измерения" - интеграция в регионе Балтийского и Баренцева морей стала решаться другим способом - расширением Евросоюза. Сразу же на программу посыпались обвинения в том, что она не имеет конкретной цели. В довершение ко всему в России, первоначально отнесшейся к "Северному измерению" с энтузиазмом, программу также начали воспринимать со скептицизмом.
  Причиной российского скептицизма были механизмы распределения финансовых средств в рамках программы. Европейский союз не собирался раздавать деньги россиянам. По программе сотрудничества "Северное измерение" большинство денег оставалось в пределах Евросоюза. Именно финские и шведские фирмы разрабатывали консультационные проекты для российских государственных предприятий, они же становились поставщиками оборудования при осуществлении проектов модернизации. Финские и шведские ученые получали в рамках "Северного измерения" многотысячные контракты на исследования, а до России собственно финансовые средства практически не доходили. Эта ситуация не устраивала Россию, и в итоге в Москве практически потеряли интерес к "Северному измерению". К 2005 году программа подошла в неприглядном виде: в ее продолжении были заинтересованы немногие, а оценки со стороны экспертов были весьма суровы. Было совсем немного сфер, где "Северное измерение" могло заявить о своей состоятельности.
  Юго-западные очистные сооружения - муниципальный проект, приобретший общеевропейское значение
  Одним из доказательств жизнеспособности "Северного измерения" стало строительство петербургских Юго-Западных очистных сооружений (ЮЗОС). В Санкт-Петербурге с начала девяностых назрела необходимость строительства комплекса предприятий, которые бы осуществляли очистку сбрасываемых городом в Финский залив и Балтийское море сточных вод. Однако самостоятельно Санкт-Петербург не мог завершить начатое в начале девяностых строительство Юго-Западных очистных сооружений, которые очищали бы сбросы весьма населенного и индустриализированного Юго-запада города.
  Необходимость защиты Финского залива и Балтийского моря как нельзя лучше вписывалось в концепцию "Северного измерения". Поэтому усилия властей Санкт-Петербурга по поиску иностранного партнера для завершения строительства ЮЗОС увенчались успехом - власти Финляндии заинтересовались проектом завершения строительства и привлекли к участию к нему и шведов, и датчан, и Европейский банк реконструкции и развития. В конце концов, ГУП "Водоканал" подписало соглашение с Министерством охраны окружающей среды Финляндии и Шведским агентством по развитию "СИДА" о завершении строительства очистных сооружений, причем средства на завершение этого строительства привлекались, прежде всего, за счет западных инвестиций.
  Меморандум о строительстве ЮЗОС стал самым большим успехом "Северного измерения". Проект был направлен на защиту экологии Балтийского моря, общего моря России и Евросоюза. Проект не был оторван от реальности - строительство очистных сооружений шло постоянно, причем каждый день на стройке происходили конкретные изменения. При этом заработать на проекте зарабатывали и еэсовские фирмы - оборудование на ЮЗОС поставлялось из ЕС. Зато деньги на строительстве получали и российские строители, да и выгода России от проекта строительства очистных сооружений была очевидной. Таким образом, проект ЮЗОС был выгоден всем, позволял и России и странам ЕС выставить себя в выгодным свете. При этом он давал возможность вести и пиар-кампанию "Северного измерения". Казавшаяся оторванной от реальности программа "бюрократического Брюсселя" позволяла улучшить экологию на Балтике, сделав тем самым лучше жизнь конкретных людей. Именно из проекта ЮЗОС выросла программа природоохранного партнерства "Северного измерения" (ПОПСИ), которая на сегодняшний день является наиболее работающей частью программы сотрудничества. Авторам проекта ЮЗОС удалось нащупать самое главное в проекте сотрудничества на Севере Европы - страны, объединенные "Северным измерением", слишком разные. Им не удастся разработать таких проектов сотрудничества в области транспорта, экономики или политики, чтобы они понравились всем. Поэтому остается разрабатывать общие для всех проблемы.
  Природоохранное партнерство необходимо всем государствам, и все понимают его важность - вот трюизм, с которым согласны и в Хельсинки, и в Стокгольме, и в Москве, и в Брюсселе. Вот почему в рамках ПОПСИ уже сегодня идет множество проектов, которые получают значительное финансирование.
  Авторы проекта строительства ЮЗОС получили признание. Директор ГУП "Водоканал Санкт-Петербурга" Феликс Кармазинов стал популярной фигурой в северных странах и получил несколько премий за сохранение окружающей среды. Строительство Юго-Западных очистных сооружений шло строго по графику, и, наконец, было в общих чертах закончено. На 22 сентября запланировано торжественное открытие ЮЗОС. Губернатор Санкт-Петербурга Валентина Матвиенко сумела собрать на церемонии открытия важных гостей: в церемонии планируют принять участие президент России Владимир Путин, президент Финляндии Тарья Халонен и премьер-министр Швеции Йоран Перссон. После церемонии открытия состоится встреча лидеров трех государств, на которой, возможно, будет вынесен окончательный диагноз проекту "Северное измерение".
  Путин, Халонен и Перссон: неравносторонний треугольник
  Встреча лидеров трех государств, конечно, будет посвящена не только Юго-Западным очистным сооружениям. Иначе вполне мог бы обидеться Пол Нюруп Рассмусен - Дания также немало вложила денег в строительство ЮЗОС. Возможно, если бы власти Дании и отнеслись бы более внимательно к просьбам российской стороны о предупреждении встреч эмиссаров чеченских террористов вскоре после теракта в театральном центре в Москве, то премьер-министр Расмуссен также был бы приглашен в Петербург 22 сентября.
  Отсутствия других глав государств даже скорее сыграло на пользу Путину, Халонен и Перссону. Они могут провести трехстороннюю встречу, не придумывая сложные схемы с "саммитом четырех" и тремя встречами перед ними. Они могут коротко обсудить вопросы двусторонних отношений (благо, Путин с Халонен уже, скорее всего обо всем договорились месяц назад в Турку, а российско-шведские отношения не так богаты событиями, как российско-финляндские) и полноценно сосредоточиться на вопросах общеевропейского сотрудничества.
  Открытие Юго-Западных очистных сооружений станет встречей трех сторон, наиболее заинтересованных в продолжении развития "Северного измерения". Финляндии и Швеции нужно, чтобы программа позволяла дальше направлять средства ЕС не в развитие отношений с Алжиром и Марокко, а на развитие отношений с Россией (с помощью шведских и финских специалистов, естественно). А России в программе "Северное измерение" интересна возможность получать от ЕС на безвозмездной основе средства. Поэтому три лидера вполне могут договориться о дальнейших совместных действиях по лоббированию продолжения программы "Северное измерение" в рамках ЕС. Да, Россия не член Евросоюза, но связи с мощными странами-членами вроде Германии у России достаточно хорошие. Если России, Швеции и Финляндии удастся договориться о едином порядке действий в лоббировании программы "Северное измерение", то можно почти не сомневаться, что "измерению" было бы суждено большое будущее. По программе бы выделялись значительные средства, большей частью оседавшие в Финляндии и Швеции, но и доходившие до реализации проектов в России.
  Правда, Перссон, Халонен и Путин могут не договориться. Неизвестно, как оценивает российский президент и его советники эту программу сотрудничества. Вполне возможно, что они разделяют общий скептический взгляд на нее. И тогда вряд Финляндии и Швеции удастся самостоятельно пролоббировать программу сотрудничества. При этом, следует учитывать, что экономика России уже ничуть не напоминает экономику образца девяносто девятого года, когда страна с трудом преодолевала последствия кризиса. В 2005 году Россия откладывает значительные средства в Стабилизационный фонд и ничуть не заинтересована в получении лишних миллионов, особенно с теми сложностями, которые предусматривает бюрократическая еэсовская процедура. Таким образом, складывается уникальная ситуация - России, которая по программе "Северное измерение" является средствополучателем, программа сотрудничества нужна меньше, чем Финляндии и Швеции, которые эту программу сотрудничества лоббируют.
  Отсюда у российской стороны может возникнуть другая опасная иллюзия - за счет обещания поддержки "Северного измерения" у Халонен и Перссона можно добиться определенных уступок. Действительно, в ответ на обещание поддержать "Северное измерение", Путин вправе рассчитывать на определенные уступки со стороны коллег. Например, непонятно, почему полиция безопасности Швеции СЭПО активно сотрудничает с американцами в вылавливании потенциальных агентов "Аль-Каиды", но при этом весьма неактивно противодействует работе с территории Швеции сайта чеченских террористов "Кавказ-центр". Непонятно, почему Финляндия активно стремится разрешить этнический конфликт в Индонезии, но при этом считает нормальной ситуации с массовым явлением "негражданства" в странах ЕС. Безусловно, Перссон и Халонен готовы пойти на определенные уступки ради продления инициативы "Северное измерение", но попытки добиться слишком многого могут привести к срыву договоренностей.
  Но, принимая во внимание опытность Путина как переговорщика, можно рассчитывать на то, что три лидера, воодушевленные таким ярким примером сотрудничества в рамках проекта "Северное измерение" как Юго-Западные очистные сооружения, договорятся о продолжении поддержки программы сотрудничества. Так что пока еще рано хоронить "Северное измерение". У России, Финляндии и Швеции есть вполне конкретные общие интересы, и достижение общих целей трех стран лучше всего происходит в рамках "Северного измерения". И, скорее всего, это подтвердит и встреча двух президентов и одного премьер-министра.
  Источник: www.brcinfo.ru
 Hiski Haukkala
 
 WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE?
 Writer of the Month -column/ Northern Dimension Advisory Network (October 2004)
 
  An old hippie song from the early 1960s begins with the above quoted words. Sometimes I find myself humming to the melody when I think about the Northern Dimension - an EU policy that was launched by the (then) Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen in a speech in September 1997. Admittedly there is an element of truth in my sub-conscious feeling to start asking where the Northern Dimension has gone. It seems that the initiative has lost most of its spark. For example, the initiative is clearly much less debated in public. A quick search to the web archives of STT - The Finnish News Agency - reveals that the initiative appears much less frequently in the Finnish media today compared to its heyday in 1999-2000. Also the research community seems to be losing its interest. Articles and publications with the words "Northern Dimension" in their titles are becoming few and far between.
  This is all perhaps only natural as the political dealings involved in the lobbying of an initiative make much bigger waves (and headlines) compared to the day-to-day and nitty-gritty implementation of a multi-sectoral sub-regional initiative (writing this sentence alone made me realize one thing that perhaps causes problems for the policy - it is hard to put it into words without using excessive amounts of jargon).
  But it seems that I am not the only person in Finland who is looking for the Northern Dimension. In late August the General Secretary for the Finnish Social Democratic Party (SDP) Eero einaluoma wrote a web column on the pages of MTV3 where he voiced his concern over the present state of affairs concerning the Finnish initiative.. In the column he took a swipe at the current government led by the Center Party's Matti Vanhanen. According to Heinaluoma, who uses an agrarian metaphor, the government has loosened its grip from a plough and a promising field has thus been left idle and to the serenity of a wilderness. Heinaluoma's points merit further discussion. Firstly, it is a peculiar thing in itself, that it is Heinaluoma, who is often thought of as Lipponen's trustee, that takes a swing at the government in public. As was already mentioned, he is after all the General Secretary of a party that is currently in a pivotal position in the ruling overnment. Surely there must be better ways for him to seek influence over Finnish policies than an open Internet column?
  Nevertheless, Heinaluoma's intervention is a welcome one. It is obvious that since Lipponen departed from the Prime Minister's Office, the government has been unable to formulate any consistent line for further development of the initiative. Or to give the current state of affairs a more kinder interpretation, the government has been preoccupied with more pressing matters, such as finalizing the EU Intergovernmental Conference and preparing for the white book on defence and security policy, to devote much time and energy on an already firmly established EU policy.
  But this is to be regretted, as the EU's "Big Bang" enlargement in May 2004 has drastically changed the name of the game within the Union. Nothing that was gained before the May Day can be seen as being secure and almost every policy and initiative has to be thought out and re-linked in new ways in order to fit with the new Union that is now in the making.
  What is Heinaluoma's remedy for the current ailment? He urges the government to take initiative and then repeats the original Finnish emphasis on energy, environment and transport infrastructure that should act as the hard core of the initiative. But dissecting his argument shows that it suffers from the same weaknesses as the Finnish government's policy that he seeks to criticize.
  The first concerns the question of timing. Heinaluoma repeats the often-heard argument that the accession of Baltic countries and Poland somehow opens a window of opportunity for Finland to reassert the importance of the Northern Dimension on the EU's agenda. But it can be asked, is this really the case? In one way the impression can be deemed correct as the countries are, if not Arctic, then at least Northern European by geography. But maps can be deceiving. One has to look not at the position of the countries per se but at the neighbours they themselves have in order to realize that they have problems of their own and are not going to be the biggest advocates of Northwestern Russia as the focus of future EU endeavours in the region. Poland has Ukraine and Belarus to worry about. Latvia and Lithuania enjoy a border with Belarus. Lithuania and Poland have also Kaliningrad as a source of concerns. Even Estonia, which is often portrayed as a natural ally to Finland, is more concerned with the Pskov oblast east of Narva and Tartu, a region which when viewed from Helsinki is veritable "southern dimension" compared to Murmansk and Karelia where the Finnish interests mainly lie.
  Secondly, Heinaluoma proposes that oil and gas should be the lifeline of the Northern Dimension in the future. This suggestion is well in line with the original Finnish thinking concerning the initiative. For example, if one goes through Lipponen's original speech from September 1997, one can see that the real beef and strategic content of it was centered on one hand on the EU's growing dependency on imported fossil fuels and on the other on Russia's ability to act as a reliable source of them. Although the thinking behind this line of reasoning is sound, there is a problem in it, as oil and gas are commodities that do not need an EU policy in order to flow to the European market.
  It is the task of multinational oil and gas companies to take care of that and they are not dependent, nor in any need, of an EU umbrella policy to help them in the task. In fact, more important than any EU initiative is the stance of the Kremlin on these issues. The case of oil and gas reveals one of the biggest challenges to the future of the Northern Dimension. Although it has been able to locate some of the crucial elements in the EU-Russia relationship, it risks nevertheless being sidelined by other processes, be they the international big businesses or the wider EU-Russia relationship. In this respect the oil and gas is a case in point in another sense as well, as it was largely snatched from the Northern Dimension agenda to the wider EU-Russia energy partnership initiated in the EU-Russia summit in Paris in 2000. Thus one can conclude that the most dynamic aspects of the Northern Dimension are too important and lucrative to be left to the level of a regional initiative alone.
  Finally, one might ask, why worry about the fate of the Northern Dimension? Like all things in life, also the Northern Dimension must have its end. The crucial question is not whether it continues its existence as a separate policy within the EU machinery. The crucial question is, what were the aims of Finland - as well as the other interested countries and parties - with the initiative originally and whether they have been met.
  And perhaps more importantly, what are the interests and objectives concerning the region today and how are they best served in the wider European constellation? It could well be that the time for a Northern Dimension as such has passed and the challenge right now is to link the current concerns to the wider EU-Russia relationship that includes the development of so-called common spaces and the European neighbourhood policy. As such, the question boils down once again to the internal EU competition. One area where one would expect to find the synergies is the managing of the severe risks that stem from the fast growth of Russian oil transit in the Gulf of Finland. There you can pinpoint a clear joint interest, firstly, between Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and secondly, between Denmark, Sweden, Germany and Poland who all in one way or another are in danger of becoming the victims of a major oil leakage should one occur in the narrow and shallow Baltic Sea. Thus it is paradoxically in the south that some of the best chances of making Northern Dimension more appealing lie in the post-"Big Bang" era.
  Источники: www.northerndimension.net и www.tukkk.fi
 Lassi Heinine
 
 NORTHERN DIMENSIONS
 Writer of the Month -column/ Northern Dimension Advisory Network
 (April 2004)
 
  In the 1990s a Northern Dimension became first as a political term onto the northern academic discourse, then as a policy initiative onto the political agenda of North Europe, and finally as a policy of the European Union and Canada. Indeed the 2nd EU Northern Dimension Action Plan, accepted in 2003, and the Northern Dimension of Canada's Foreign Policy, accepted in 2000, are examples of well defined policy priorities for the North. Although not exactly similar, but a kind of northern, or maybe more European, policy was the North European Initiative, which the US Government launched in 1997, toward the Baltic Sea region and Northwest Russia. In Russia, apart from having a role in both the policies of the EU, Canada and the USA, there has been a more academic discourse addressing a need to redefine the role of the Russian North as more than a geostrategically important resource reserve. It is also possible to interpret that Russia is in a process of formulating its own northern framework. In spite of a short history, a Northern Dimension has been so far attractive since on one hand, several interpretations to define the concept, and on the other hand, different proposals and hopes for the contents have been given by many different actors. By singling out a Northern Dimension, these policies and discourses reflect the growing awareness of the unique opportunities and challenges in the North, and here I discuss on the Northern Dimension policy of the European Union and that of Canada.
  While the two Northern Dimension policies have inherent value in organizing their own North-South relationships, little has been done to look at them jointly. What both policy as in common is that the geographic region includes the Arctic and North Atlantic as well as North America and Russia on one hand, and on the other hand, they deal with the northern inter-governmental and regional councils like the Barents Euro-Arctic Council and the Arctic Council (AC). This interesting cooperative context should mean value added to each Northern Dimension policy.
  The European Union's Northern Dimension is a policy toward North Europe and the Arctic among the external and cross-border policies of the European Union. What is interesting here is the fact that the contents of the EU's ND has developed in a common process by the EU institutions, EU member states and the ND partner counties each with their particular emphases. In this process the partner countries and Greenland, have been given, or they have earned, a strong, almost equal, position within the EU's ND, although the EU's ND is originally an EU-led initiative. This had an important role to make the attitude among partner countries to support the initiative and policy. Correspondingly, the Northern Dimension of Canada's foreign policy has the same term as that of the EU, but as a policy of one state it includes its own design and procedure. Canada launched the policy after a process which was based on three simultaneous Consultation processes in the Federal Government, between that and territorial and provincial governments and with non-governmental organisations and stake-holders.
  The main objectives of the Northern Dimension of Canada's foreign policy are first, to enhance the security of Canadians and northern peoples, second, to ensure Canada's entity, and fourth, to promote the human security and sustainable development. Correspondingly, the main aim of the EU's Northern Dimension is to increase stability and civic security, but excluding traditional security or security-policy, to enhance democratic reforms, and to build up positive interdependence and sustainable development, especially due to the highly vulnerable arctic nature threatened by pollution and health problems affecting people living in the high north. From the point of view of the EU the ND is a framework and process for continuous dialogue on cooperation between the EU and its neighbours, especially the Russian Federation, and for co-ordination, even management, of cross-border cooperation across the EU borders.
  The activity of the EU's Northern Dimension is meant to focus on the sectors, where the 'added value' is expected to be the greatest, i.e. the so-called priority sectors within each of them strategic priorities and specific objectives. Comparing to the 1st ND Action Plan there is focus on energy cooperation, human resources and social issues such as education and public health, and the environment - all the sectors which are relevant for the Arctic. Indeed, the priority is also to have the Arctic together with Kaliningrad "as cross-cutting issues, main-streamed within each key priority". The objectives of Canada's Northern Dimension are indicated by the main themes of the recent and current Canadian dialogue and discourse on the North and northern issues such as the role of indigenous governance and geopolitical, legal and economic implications of climate change as a new reality for Canadian sovereignty and interests in the North.
  Thus, the Northern Dimension of Canada's foreign policy addresses on one hand, the issues of sovereignty and other national interests in the North, and on the other hand, the expansion to include the strong notion of the circumpolar North as an integrated entity of human security. Its contents has a strong emphasis on the national interests of Canada in and to the North.
  If the special northern features, with the exception of natural resources and environmental problems, did not play a relevant role in the 1st Action Plan of the EU's Northern Dimension, then the Arctic 'came back' in the 2nd Action Plan. The Arctic dimension seems to have consolidated its position as a part of the ND, although not all have seen it centrally important, since the EU has adopted it as a new item in the political dialogue with Canada and the USA. Thus, the political focus of the 2nd Action Plan has moved from the Baltic Sea Region more toward Northwest Russia and the Arctic including Greenland. This together with the priority of the Arctic together with Kaliningrad is an interesting choice and opportunity to promote the achievements of the main aims in the North.
  Relevant for the Arctic, as well for both the EU, Russia and North America, is that energy cooperation, mostly due to the large and for the most part unexploited energy resources of the Russian North, are among the priority sectors of the ND together with the development of infrastructure and transportation, and a concern of the environment. At the same time, a state policy in the North in general, and especially the EU's Northern Dimension, would, even should, mean more than just the mass-scale utilization of natural resources and a gateway model for the passage of raw materials, labour force or expertise.

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