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The EU and Russia
want to follow Kaliningrad’s example, if it prospers through closer integration with EU neighbours. The diverging visions of Russia and the EU may well clash at some point in the future. They are already impeding EU attempts to support Kaliningrad’s local economy. Some S25 million in EU aid allocated to Kaliningrad remains unspent because the EU and Russia disagree about policy priorities. Once they have sorted out the nittygritty of transit rights and fishing quotas, the EU and Russia will have to start a more strategic dialogue on the future of Kaliningrad.
The Northern Dimension The Northern Dimension, a regional co-operation programme, developed from a vague idea into concrete action plans during the late 1990s. The aim is to get
8 The role of leaders, bureaucrats and institutions
The EU and Russia share many interests, as the previous chapters describe. Yet they find it difficult to get on. In many respects, their differences are real and profound, as Chapter 2 argues. But poor communication, badly designed institutions and flawed decisionmaking on both sides are making the bilateral relationship unnecessarily complicated. There is certainly no institutional cure for all the ills in EU-Russia relations. But it is worth looking at how policy-making processes and common institutions affect the relationship, and at what could be done to make it easier for the two sides to deal with each other.
various actors – not only or even primarily national governments, but also regional or local governments, NGOs and businesses – from the Nordic and Baltic countries, and north-western Russia, to work together. The actors involved report some small but important successes in economic, social and environmental co-operation. But the Northern Dimension programme has also encountered numerous obstacles. Finland is the main driving force within the EU, but the larger EU countries that usually lead in EU foreign policy have shown little interest. The southern EU states are overtly suspicious because they think that the Northern Dimension will divert scarce resources from other neighbouring regions, in particular the Middle East and North Africa, which top
The institutional framework for bilateral relations The current institutional structure for EU-Russia relations is neither simple nor particularly effective. It involves six-monthly summits, annual ministerial meetings and a plethora of dialogues, working groups, commissions and committees. As David 32 David Gowan, Gowan, former deputy ambassador to Moscow has ‘How the EU can observed: “Problems are often passed up and down help Russia’, CER the chain of this structure without being resolved.”32 January 2001.
their own foreign policy agenda. The Russian government – while officially committed to the programme – does not like the fact that it requires a degree of autonomy for local governments so that they can work together without involving their capitals.
The six-monthly summits have become more useful since Putin took over in the Kremlin. As one Brussels official puts it: “Of the three parties attending [Russian president, Commission president and the leader of the country that holds the rotating EU presidency], Putin is usually the best prepared.” Yet the summit meetings are too tightly scripted to allow for real discussions. The same applied to the annual meetings of the so-called co-operation council, which was co-chaired by the Russian foreign minister and his counterpart from the EU