[Moscow has avoided
condemning the meeting outright. But the Russian foreign minister, Sergei
Lavrov, speaking in Brussels this week, said that Europe needed to take care
that its Eastern Partnership “does not damage the legitimate interests of the
Russian Federation.” He did not explain those interests.]
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|
Jean-Claude Juncker, the
European Commission president, center left, greeted President
Petro
O. Poroshenko of Ukraine.
|
RIGA, Latvia — Prime Minister David
Cameronof Britain showed up hours late, but the absentee who really
mattered — and haunted all discussion during a two-day meeting of leaders from
Europe and former Soviet lands — was President Vladimir
V. Putin of Russia, who had not even been invited.
The gathering in Riga,
the capital of Latvia, a former Soviet republic now deeply entrenched in both the European
Union and NATO, was originally billed as a chance to give new
impetus to the European bloc’s so-called Eastern Partnership, a six-year-old push into
six former Soviet territories that Moscow still views as being in its own
sphere of influence.
But Mr. Putin has put so
much pressure on Ukraine and the five other countries to back away from any
shift toward the West that theEuropean
Union on Friday declared its Riga meeting a success simply
because leaders had managed to stand still.
Eschewing any need for
“dramatic decisions and giant steps forward,” Donald Tusk, a former Polish
prime minister who is now president of the European Council, said that a joint
declaration issued by the leaders in Riga showed that “our intentions remain just
the same as they were five years ago.”
This meant reaffirming an
earlier acknowledgment of the “European aspirations” of countries like Ukraine
and Georgia while making clear that this was in no way an invitation to
actually join the 28-nation European Union.
“They are not ready, and
we are not ready,” Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European
Commission, said on Thursday. The meeting also disappointed Georgian and
Ukrainian hopes of movement toward visa-free travel in Europe, a right so far
granted only to Moldova.
“This is the maximum of
what we could achieve today,” Mr. Tusk said Friday.
The Eastern Partnership
meeting was the first since an ill-fated gathering at the end of 2013 that set
the stage for months of pro-European protests in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, and
led to the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. That
was followed in March last year by Mr. Putin’s swift seizure of Crimea, and
conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine that continues today.
“This new geopolitical
reality was the focus of all our discussions,” Petro O. Poroshenko, Ukraine’s
pro-European president said at a news conference in Riga. The European
Commission, confirming a 1.8 billion-euro loan package, worth about $2 billion,
for Ukraine that was announced in January, signed an agreement in Riga for the
money with Ukraine’s national bank.
Outside the meeting at
Latvia’s vast new national library, a few dozen pro-Russian protesters held up
banners accusing leaders of seeking to divide Europe and stoke conflict. “The
Eastern Partnership — the fuse for war,” read one banner.
Moscow has avoided
condemning the meeting outright. But the Russian foreign minister, Sergei
Lavrov, speaking in Brussels this week, said that Europe needed to take care
that its Eastern Partnership “does not damage the legitimate interests of the
Russian Federation.” He did not explain those interests.
The only hint of drama in
the Riga meeting hall was a last-minute squabble over the text of the joint
declaration, with Azerbaijan objecting to a line about Nagorno-Karabakh —
contested territory now controlled by Armenia — and Belarus and Armenia complaining
about a reference to a European Union declaration in April on the “illegal
annexation” of Crimea.
Mr. Tusk helped resolve
the standoff by telephoning Azerbaijan’s authoritarian leader, Ilham Aliyev,
who had stayed at home and sent his foreign minister to the Riga meeting. All
eventually agreed to the statement.
The European Union’s
laborious decision-making process, slowed by the interests of 28 countries, has
left the bloc severely handicapped in its outreach efforts to Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, all of which have faced
swift and far more direct pressure from Russia.
Some members of the bloc,
notably Cyprus, Greece and Hungary, have sought to improve relations with
Russia and argued against what they see as “provocative” actions in former
Soviet territory.
Hungary’s leader, Viktor
Orban, who has riled fellow leaders with his approving comments about Mr. Putin
and the death penalty, was welcomed in Riga by Mr. Juncker with a jocular
“Hello, dictator,” Reuters reported.
The six former Soviet
republics are themselves deeply divided over what direction they want to take
and have often zigzagged between East and West, drawn to Moscow by their
dependence on Russian energy and markets, but tugged toward Brussels by the
promise of financial and other help to modernize.
“Moscow is the bullying
old brother you know and can’t avoid,” said Thomas de Waal, an expert on the
former Soviet Union at the Carnegie International Endowment for Peace in
Washington. “Brussels is the nice new neighbor making you offers you like the
sound of but don’t properly understand.”
He added that members of
the European Union had wildly different views on how to deal with the six
prospective partners. Some see them as eager to embrace Western ways with the
same gusto as Baltic States like Latvia. Others consider them firmly in Russia’s
backyard.
“We are not talking about
six Polands; these are still countries with a strong Soviet legacy,” Mr. de
Waal said. He said opinion polls suggested that most people in them want
relationships with both Russia and the European Union, “not either or.”
“Half the trade is with
Russia, most people speak Russian, the elites studied in Moscow,” he said.
Mr. Tusk, in remarks at
the start of the Riga meeting, insisted that the Eastern Partnership was not
“directed against Russia” and was “not a beauty contest between Russia and the
E.U.” Still, he went on to declare Europe a more attractive suitor.
“Let me be frank, beauty
does count,” he said. “If Russia was a bit softer, more charming or more
attractive, perhaps it would not have to compensate its shortcoming with
aggressive and bullying tactics against its neighbors.”
Another problem hobbling
Europe’s efforts to counter the far blunter and more focused strategy of Mr.
Putin is the fact that Western European leaders tend to have far less interest
in the Eastern Partnership than those in the East with direct and mostly
painful memories of Soviet power.
Prime Minister Cameron of
Britain, who arrived in Riga early Friday, hours after other leaders had
already started their talks, evinced scant interest in Europe’s role in former
Soviet lands. Instead, he focused on Britain’s own concerns, notably its
determination to reshape the European Union ahead of a referendum planned for
next year on whether the United Kingdom should leave the European bloc.
“Today I will start
discussions in earnest with fellow leaders on reforming the E.U. and
renegotiating the U.K.’s relationship with it,” Mr. Cameron said early Friday.
It was a position that chagrined leaders who wanted to focus on the East.
Speaking later at a news
conference, he insisted that “Britain has done as much as any other country in
standing up to Russia.”
But he devoted most of
his comments to the need for changes in the way the European Union operates. He
said he “was confident at getting those changes,” but acknowledged that “I was
not met with a wall of love when I arrived.”
Also preoccupied with
immediate domestic concerns was Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s leftist prime
minister, who came to Riga hoping to break a logjam on negotiations aimed at
unblocking funds for his nearly bankrupt country. He met late Thursday with
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France,
but their talks yielded no breakthrough.
