At the end of May the Russian Government approved plans for an oil pipeline that would bypass Belarus and tighten the grip of Moscow over the European Union’s energy supplies. The new pipeline is expected to be operational in 18 months and will add 2,5 million barrels of oil a day to the current supply, reinforcing the EU’s already highly dependency on Russian energy. (More than 80% of the EU’s natural gas consumption is of Russian origin…)
Since the 2004 enlargement of the EU with 10 new member states (ironically called The Big Bang), relations between the EU and Russia have been at stake. Eight of the new EU countries, the former Soviet republics, often show on the one hand a nearly unconditional servility to US President Bush (CIA detention camps; installing of missiles on the Russian border) and on the other hand a, perhaps understandable but not very intelligent, frustration with former occupier Russia (a Polish veto blocked a new treaty for cooperation with Russia). The group of former Soviet republics extended further eastwards with the new EU members Romania and Bulgaria in the beginning of this year.
Jekaterina Koeznetsova, director at Moscow’s Center of Post-industrial Research wrote in the Dutch quality paper NRC/Handelsblad: ‘I have the impression that it is not the European Union in Brussels which has the responsibility for EU-Russia relations, but the governments in Warsaw and Vilnius’. Ms Koeznetsova’s conclusion is that the EU has no power to come forward with one clear policy: ‘Brussels has no grip on its relations with Russia. It looks like the EU doesn’t want it. The effect will be that Russia continues to go in the direction of isolation and autocracy’.
Former Russian president Boris Jeltsin died recently, symbolic for the change of mind of Russian leadership. His successor Vladimir Putin is an ascetic, who doesn’t accept the western humiliations of the past. After a period of huge economic problems, exploiting its enormous natural resources makes Russia now a ‘rich’ country. And President Putin knows how to play the game; he has brought back his country to the position of a world power. Experienced leaders like former German Chancellor Schrυder and ex-President Chirac of France understood him better and didn’t want to give in to east-European frustration.
In the Berlaymont building, the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels, the unofficial opinion is that Russia has somehow become stronger than realised as it holds vast energy reserves, needed by Europe to maintain our standard of living. The question is how to reconcile this with Russia-phobia, especially that of Poland. In Brussels the problem to solve is not Russia, but the lack of a common EU energy policy.
Putin is aware of EU’s weakest point, the inability to cooperate and he is using Russia’s strongest point, the richness of natural resources. This is par for the course in the sight of important forthcoming elections in his own country.
