The workshop is premised on the view that we are now entering a new phase in the development of post-Soviet Europe. Clearly, further NATO enlargement and EU expansion are unlikely to take place in the next few years, creating a zone of insecurity and potential instability dividing those countries which succeeded in winning integration into the EU and into NATO in recent years from those countries that have sought membership without any immediate prospects of achieving it.  Moreover, even among countries that have been successful in achieving membership in recent years there remains continuing anxiety about the degree to which their new European partners are prepared to support their economic viability and guarantee their security, particularly in light of increased assertiveness from Moscow.

The central purpose of this workshop series is to analyze the new dynamics emerging within this region, focusing on the external influences exerted by Moscow and Brussels and how they interact with the internal dynamics of the “corridor” countries, and to explore possible scenarios for future stabilization and development.

This workshop will be held November 5 and 6, 2009 at Stanford.  The primary focus will be the “corridor” of countries consisting of the Baltic and Central European members of the EU and NATO, together with Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Moscow and Brussels will enter as driving outside influences. The participants will include analysts and policymakers from the region itself as well as scholars from the relevant scholarly communities.

 

In recent years, the United States and its European Union partners have often diverged in their policy outlooks towards the wider European periphery—the diverse region stretching from the Balkans and Turkey, to the Westernmost former-Soviet republics and Russia. Whether a temporary hiatus or a more profound strategic divergence, this state of affairs reflects a departure from the mission of extending peace, freedom and prosperity to the European continent that the two sides have pursued in the post-Cold War period.

Fabrizio Tassinari, PhD, is Head of Foreign Policy and EU Studies Unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies in Copenhagen. He is also a non-resident Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels and at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins’ SAIS in Washington, DC. He has written extensively on European security and integration. His book, Why Europe Fears Its Neighbors, was published on September 30, 2009.

 

Event Synopsis:

Dr. Tassinari's talk draws upon his recent book, "Why Europe Fears its Neighbors" (Praeger Security International, 2009), which attempts to survey and quantify the many challenges facing Europe with respect to its borders. Tassinari describes Europe's position toward neighbor countries as being influenced by the threat of immigration. He describes a "security-integration nexus" in progress since 1945, involving a gradual economic opening of Europe's borders to promote stability. While the EU today maintains to some degree its enlargement policy toward Turkey and the Western Balkans, other border-region states are classified under a "European neighborhood policy" with no prospects for EU membership. Recent policy discourse has decoupled security concerns from integration. The neighborhood approach, undermines EU policy by keeping neighbor states at too great a distance.

Next Tassinari offers Turkey and Russia as case studies. The debate within Turkey is leaning away from EU membership as the primary path toward modernization. Recent dialogue focuses less on meeting technical standards for EU membership and more on reckoning with issues of religion, identity and history within Turkey. With regards to Russia, in the past decade the country has become more assertive abroad and moved away from cooperation with the EU, preferring not to be grouped with countries like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia in the EU's approach to foreign policy.

In addressing the transatlantic relationship, Dr. Tassinari reflects that the US and EU have long disagreed about EU membership for Turkey, the direction of state building in the Balkans, and integration of some of Europe's neighbor states into NATO.

Finally, responding to the question of whether this divergence comes from a conflict over the "European power constellation" or rather is simply the result of issue-specific philosophical differences, Dr. Tassinari offers three arguments:

1. Strategic: EU policy reflects multi-level integration, wherein countries can be "more than partners and less than members." Tassinari believes even countries with no prospect for membership should be integrated as much as possible. 
2. Normative - in reality, the US and EU share goals for Europe's "neighborhood" - promoting democracy, human rights, and other values. Despite this, each side's initiatives are viewed with suspicion by the other. 
3. Institution - US policymakers buy in to the EU enlargement policy, with its firm commitments and well-rehearsed conditionality process, and don't see alternative policies such as the "neighborhood" approach as being useful. 

A Q&A session following the talk raised such issues as: Will the EU’s problems with “deepening” its relationships with neighbors hurt its prospects for “widening” through enlargement? What are the reasons for the mixed signals to Turkey from the EU? Do arguments about the EU’s denial of Turkey’s membership being based on racism hold any merit? If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, what cross-border policy areas will remain the prerogative of nation-states and which might fall under EU Commission jurisdiction?

 

Jakob Tolstrup is a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009 and will be doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.

Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).

Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.