The European Neighbourhood Policy - Values and Principles

Sara Poli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138943094
• eBook ISBN: 9781317374107
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Law Theory & Practice
• Index: Law

The European Neighbourhood Policy is a key part of the foreign policy of the European Union (EU), through which the EU works with its southern and eastern neighbours with a view to furthering its interests and achieving the closest possible degree of political association and economic integration. The policy is underpinned by a set of values and principles that the EU seeks to promote.

The European Neighbourhood Policy – Values and Principles carries out a legal analysis of the values and principles that form the basis for the European Neighbourhood Policy – respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights (including the rights of minorities), plus the principles of conditionality, differentiation and coherence.

This collection explores the instruments that the EU has deployed under the European Neighbourhood Policy to spread its values and to achieve its interests. It assesses to what extent the EU has been (and is) consistent in upholding its values in its relations with neighbouring countries, and examines how these values have been received by these countries. The book looks in particular at the nature of EU-Russia relations, seeking to identify areas of common interest as well as those of actual and potential disagreement.

Part I

EU values and their contestation

1The fluid concept of ‘EU values’ in the neighbourhood

A change of paradigm from East to South?

Nariné Ghazaryan

Introduction: setting the scene

Exporting European Union (EU) values has been a staple of the rhetoric of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) since its early days in 2003. Values were to be promoted to and shared with all addressees of the policy, the list of which grew to cover a vast geographic area in the vicinity of the European Union, including both bordering and other countries.¹ The ENP applies to the EU's eastern and southern neighbours with varying intensities as some countries have seemingly advanced legally and politically in their cooperation with the EU, while others have not agreed on a basic framework of cooperation.² In 2008 and 2009, a few years following the ENP's inception, EU neighbourhood policies were divided into regional flanks, with the Eastern Partnership (EaP) and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM).³

Exporting EU values is a means to an end, i.e. the achievement of the EU's wider policy objectives of securing a stable and safe zone around its post-2004 and 2007 enlargement borders.⁴ The underlying idea is that the more the EU's neighbours replicate EU values, the safer and securer the EU will be. Ambitious in its scope, the policy aimed to integrate the neighbouring states into the EU in an extensive range of areas.⁵ In the absence of a membership agenda, the incentive of a deep and comprehensive free trade area has gradually emerged to motivate willing neighbours in their efforts to emulate the EU's values as well as its institutions and practices.

The application of ENP conditionality both in the east and in the south has faced much criticism.⁶ Rather than considering EU values in the light of the policy of conditionality,⁷ this chapter explores the normative agenda of this conditionality. Currently, Art. 2 TEU offers a list of EU values such as freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human dignity and human rights, including minority rights. While this list serves broadly as a signpost for the values to be promoted, it is worth analyzing what is meant by them. The chapter also considers how the EU has shaped these values in its relations with its eastern and southern neighbours.

The EU might be expected to require a more stringent standard from the Eastern Neighbourhood, for two reasons. First, the ENP was originally aimed at the EU’s eastern neighbours, some of which, including Russia, were to be affected to a certain extent by the 2004 enlargement, and some of which were rather vocal about their aspirations for EU membership. Second, although the EU intended the ENP to be a replacement for EU membership for the countries concerned, it nevertheless did not entirely rule out such membership. Since there has been no membership rejection as in the case of Morocco in 1987, Art. 49 TEU allows any ‘European’ state to apply for membership upon fulfilling certain conditions. It was therefore legitimate to expect the EU to be stricter with European countries. However, this does not necessarily mean that the EU is imposing a strict standard on all its eastern neighbours.⁸ This chapter explores the extent to which the values of the EU differ depending on the specific grouping of neighbours. In the first section, ‘values’ as established in the ENP foundational policy documents, as well as the Action Plans (APs) – the initial bilateral policy documents – are examined. The second section traces the projection of EU values in the multilateral frameworks of cooperation created following the geographic division in the policy and considers the effects that the Arab Spring revolutions have had on both policy flanks. The third section presents a comparison between the essential elements clauses in the latest and most important instruments of cooperation in the East – the newly established Association Agreements (AAs) with Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova⁹ – and the Euro-Mediterranean AAs in the South, some of which were concluded after the ENP was inaugurated.¹⁰

EU values as set out in ENP documents and Action Plans

The first ENP document, the 2003 Wider Europe Communication, contains an indication of the values dimension of the ENP initiative: it starts off by including democracy and respect for human rights and the rule of law within ‘shared values’ and, in a footnote, links these concepts to the Charter of Fundamental Rights.¹¹ Not only did the Charter have no binding legal force at that time, but also its content, although relevant for democracy and the rule of law, could be characterized as a bill of rights (including non-justiciable principles).¹² This was rather unusual since the EU refers to international standards in its contractual relations with third countries (see, for instance, human rights clauses of EU agreements). The Wider Europe Communication continues by including pluralism, civil liberties and core labour standards, which are viewed as ‘essential prerequisites for political stability, as well as for peaceful and sustained social and economic development.’¹³ In addition, the Communication stresses the institutional aspect of democracy and human rights by emphasizing the importance of ‘strong democratic institutions’ and ‘the need to institutionalise respect for human rights.’¹⁴ After defining these core ‘values’, the Communication makes a judgement about progress in political reform in the neighbourhood: ‘Generally, the countries of the WNIS [Western Newly Independent States] and Russia have taken steps towards establishing democracy and market institutions over the past 12 years. Yet political reform in the majority of the countries of the Mediterranean has not progressed as quickly as desired.’¹⁵ This judgement would have suggested at the time that the EU would be stricter in its approach towards values in its relations with its southern neighbours than with Moldova and Ukraine (part of the WNIS).

The concept of ‘shared values’ is further emphasized in a 2004 ENP Strategy Paper: ‘The privileged relationship with neighbours will build on mutual commitment to common values principally within the fields of the rule of law, good governance, the respect for human rights, including minority rights, the promotion of good neighbourly relations’.¹⁶ While it would seem that democracy is replaced here with good governance, the Strategy Paper also gives the Commission monitoring powers with respect to ‘the strengthening of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.’¹⁷ Most importantly, the Strategy Paper specifies the ‘values’ that the APs will contain:

strengthening democracy and the rule of law, the reform of the judiciary and the fight against corruption and organised crime; respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of media and expression, rights of minorities and children, gender equality, trade union rights and other core labour standards, and the fight against the practice of torture and prevention of ill-treatment; support for the development of civil society; and co-operation with the International Criminal Court.¹⁸

This appears to be an indicative list of priority actions, which includes general actions that can be implemented without any prioritization. The ENP Strategy Paper also makes it clear that international standards will form the basis for the promotion of these values. These international standards include UN human rights conventions, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (for those neighbours who are members of the Council of Europe), the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and, in relation to South Caucasian countries, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).¹⁹ The 2006 Commission Communication on strengthening the ENP did not add much to the understanding of the values and merely referred to their interlinked nature with the other areas of cooperation.²⁰ The Communication's muted stance might have been because most of the bilateral APs were already in place by then.

In terms of the priority actions that reflect the EU values with each ENP country, the APs can be divided into two main groups: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Ukraine and Moldova in one group and Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the other.²¹ The APs for the first group can be grouped under a wider list of priority actions related to democracy and human rights. Despite the regional distinction and the presumption in the Wider Europe Communication that non-EU Mediterranean countries are lagging behind in their progress on political reform, a similar range of issues can be identified with a comparable intensity.²²

Thus the priority areas relevant to our discussion are usually divided under two headings: (1) democracy and the rule of law, and (2) human rights and fundamental freedoms.²³ The first heading mainly focuses on strengthening democratic institutions, often with an emphasis on free and fair elections, decentralization, the independence and efficiency of the judiciary, the functioning of civil society and the fight against corruption. The second heading refers to specific rights and freedoms, with a major emphasis on political rights, including freedom of association, media pluralism, the prevention of torture, freedom of religion, women’s and children’s rights, social rights and labour standards.

Not all issues are equally reflected in all APs; for instance, the APs for Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia (southern neighbours) have a stronger emphasis on women’s rights, as well as on fighting discrimination, racism and xenophobia. The Ukrainian and Moldovan APs have additional actions, such as ensuring international justice related to the International Criminal Court.

The APs in the first group were much criticized for being overly general in nature, with a lack of precision and poor benchmarking.²⁴ The second group of APs (i.e. for the South Caucasian countries) is even more limited in its approach. Their priorities for political reform...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• Part I EU values and their contestation
• Part II Techniques to promote EU values
• Part III The EU's values in EU–Russia relations
• Part IV The ENP and the principle of coherence
• Index