The EU seeks to advance democracy and good governance in the EaP region but has hit upon hard geopolitical realities in its endeavours, affecting its efforts in two ways. First, EU engagement and norm promotion become subject to geopolitical competition and are, in addition to challenges stemming from the EaP countries themselves, confronted with Russian economic, military, diplomatic and informational pushback. Russian pressure on Ukraine and Armenia not to sign AAs with the EU provides a good example; the pressure on Armenia proved successful because of Russia’s position as that country’s security guarantor. Second, in their efforts to offer the EaP countries support against pressures from the Russian Federation, EU interlocutors often fall into the trap of tacitly accepting or even actively supporting regimes that do not share EU values. Compromising on its values out of short-term geopolitical considerations regarding sovereignty and stability risks undermining the EU’s very own democratisation agenda.[4]

The past decade has made it clear that the EU is, in practice, a player in the same geopolitical game as the Russian Federation – but does not necessarily have to play by the same rules. This section therefore examines how the EU could move towards a value-driven approach that considers geopolitical realities.

The Eastern Partnership: a geopolitical project?

The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) was initially not designed as a geopolitical project. It was entrenched in the treaties as a policy framework aimed at spreading European norms and values, although based on a ‘special relationship’.[5] After a short period of relative cooperation between the EU and Russia, the latter declined an invitation to join the ENP in 2003, signalling the beginning of a period in which divergences in the EU’s and Russia’s values, interests and world views became ever more apparent, especially in relation to the shared neighbourhood.[6] By the time the EaP was founded in 2009 as an additional, more ambitious, multilateral format for the ENP, the Russian rejection of the ‘westernisation’ of the EaP region had already been reflected in the country’s military actions in Georgia, to be followed by military action in Donbas and Crimea in 2014.[7]

The EU revised the ENP in 2015 to adapt the policy to the increasingly tense geopolitical context, enhance the focus on security and stability, and better match the level of ambition of EaP countries to deepen relationships. Apart from the growing importance of geopolitics, the EU had learned that ‘the neighbourhood countries themselves ha[d] proven to be less inclined to adhere to EU norms than initially thought’.[8] While upholding a discourse of democracy and good governance promotion, the balance in the EU’s actual EaP policies shifted from a normative to a more opportunistic and transactional approach, for which the EU has received much criticism. One author wrote that the EU in 2019 ‘once more […] shied away from holding incumbent eastern neighbourhood regimes fully accountable for half-hearted, sluggish or even entirely absent political and judicial reforms, state capture and misuse of state resources …’.[9]

Indeed, the EU’s transactional turn has been the wrong response to increasing geopolitical pressures. It has led to a significant gap between the EU’s normative discourse and its actual policies towards the EaP countries. Belarus is a case in point. Even though Lukashenka’s commitment to democratic values had consistently been low, the EU already dithered with its sanctions policy before the August 2020 election. This was largely due to geopolitical considerations, with the EU being keen to offer Belarus an alternative to its alignment with Russia. After Lukashenka’s electoral fraud and brutal crackdown, the EU equally struggled to impose sanctions against his regime due to internal squabbling.

Source: EPP Group

In the case of Georgia, the EU’s intentions to support the country’s sovereignty has resulted in a failure to hold politicians publicly accountable for a lack of democratic reforms.[10] The case of the failed AA with Armenia also attests to the effect of geopolitics and security concerns on EU ambitions, as discussed later in this report. In the case of Azerbaijan, the EU has focused primarily on its (energy) interests, while failing to call the authoritarian spade a spade.

The EU’s transactional turn means Brussels has done away with one of its most important geopolitical weapon: its values. Of the two cornerstones of the Union, normative and economic power, only the latter is fully employed. While searching for adequate responses to geopolitical challenges, EU policies have decayed into an ad-hoc ‘saving what can be saved’ endeavour lacking prescient and confident strategy, leaving commentators no choice but to conclude that the EU’s policies are in ‘suspended animation’.[11]

Think geopolitics… play democracy

During the EaP Summit, the EU will need to give new impetus to its normative aspirations while simultaneously advancing a more realistic geopolitical agenda. That is especially the case because the main debates in some of EaP societies have moved beyond geopolitics. This post-geopolitical realisation renders current EU policies counter-effective to the needs of their populations. In Moldova, both the campaigns and outcomes of parliamentary and presidential elections in 2019 and 2020 have made it clear that citizens do not seek reforms because of a wish to join the EU, but because they wish to get rid of oligarchic state capture. In an August 2020 poll undertaken by IRI, citizens in Moldova almost exclusively cited issues of political corruption and incompetency, as well as socioeconomic issues, as the most important problems facing their country.[12] These were the topics dominating the elections, not geopolitics.[13] The same can be observed in Belarus, and to a lesser extent in Ukraine and Georgia.

Given that security challenges stemming from unresolved conflicts are here to stay,[14] how can the EU better anticipate the geopolitical context in which it operates? The EU would do well to recognise that geopolitics are inevitable. It would benefit from taking geopolitics into account in its calculations, without playing by the same rules as the Russian Federation. In short, the EU needs to think geopolitics, but play democracy.

The EU could do so by stepping away from its opportunistic approach, which has not provided a sustainable path towards its democratic aspirations nor towards resolving geopolitical tensions. The EU could better anticipate the needs of citizens – particularly in Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia – by more resolutely supporting their democratic ambitions. This would require the EU to become more vocal towards EaP governments on undemocratic and corrupt practices. Instead of (implicitly) accepting or backing governments for the sake of stability or geopolitics, the EU could better play into the post-geopolitical needs in various EaP countries and aim to foster real societal resilience. The EU boasts of significant soft-power capabilities that could be used more proactively and confidently to support such a policy. The contribution of Elżbieta Kaca to this report provides recommendations on how to give democratisation efforts new impetus. If applied consistently and patiently, the EU’s values of good governance, rule of law and transparency could be its most potent geopolitical instruments which may, in the long run, prevail over the short-term interests of wooing particular regimes.