by Katinka Barysch
Now that Kosovo’s independence party is over, the hard work begins. Despite the efforts of the UN and the EU, the institutions of government remain fragile, corruption is rife, and organised crime is a problem. Although growth has picked up, the economy remains in a woeful state. Kosovars like to blame poverty and joblessness on politics. Many hope that, now that the status question has finally been settled, money will start flowing in, creating growth and jobs.
This may be true as far as official assistance is concerned: as an independent country, Kosovo hopes to be able to borrow from the IMF, the World Bank and other financial institutions. More aid will also be forthcoming, since the international community cannot afford to see Kosovo fail. The European Commission and the World Bank are planning to convene a donors conference over the next couple of months. The Commission expects the Europeans to drum up €2 billion, and the Americans say they will contribute $400 million.
However, the Europeans are also aware of the risk of turning Kosovo into an aid-dependent protectorate. Since 1999, the EU and its member-states have already given €2.6 billion to Kosovo. A lot of that went into rebuilding houses and roads after the 1998-99 conflict. But it has failed to build a viable economy. Even today, perhaps 20 per cent of Kosovo’s GDP directly depend on foreign aid.
Kosovo’s economic problems are not only the result of the sanctions of the 1990s and the 1998-99 conflict: when it was still part of Yugoslavia, Kosovo already relied on big transfers from Belgrade, and unemployment was much higher than in other parts of the federation. But in the 1990s the economy basically collapsed. And despite signs of recovery in recent years, the challenges remain huge.
Official unemployment stands at around 40 per cent. And even if black market activities and subsistence agriculture are taken into account, there are more Kosovars on the dole than in a job. Unemployment is particularly high among those under 25, who make up half of Kosovo’s 2 million people. Around half a million Kosovars have left to work in the EU, many of them illegally.
Of those who stayed at home, more than a third live below the poverty line, and social services only reach a tiny share of them. There are no industries to speak off, and little to export apart from scrap metal. The current-account deficit amounts to 50 per cent of GDP (although that is inflated by the big international presence). Although the EU claims that it has invested €400 million into the power sector alone, regular electricity blackouts remain the biggest problem for local businesses.
The news is not all bad: GDP growth has picked up despite a gradual reduction in international aid; household incomes have been rising; tax revenue has started to recover, and privatisation has provided the budget with an independent source of cash; and almost all children now go to school, at least some of the time.
Some foreign companies have started to look at the mining and power sectors: Kosovo sits on Europe’s second largest deposits of brown coal, and it also has sizeable resources of lead, zinc and nickel. Building up these sectors for exports would reduce the external deficit and bring in foreign exchange. But since energy and mining are capital rather than labour intensive industries, they will not create many jobs. The resolution of status alone will not be enough to attract foreign investment into other manufacturing sectors and services. Kosovo will need a more open and transparent business environment, an efficient state administration and skilled workers. Despite the EU’s help and promise of eventual accession, such reforms will take years.
The World Bank says that even with 6 per cent annual growth (twice what Kosovo manages at the moment), it would take ten years to cut unemployment by half, from 40 to 20 per cent. Persistent unemployment, in particular among the young, will fuel frustration, which would be bad for political peace.
There are two things that the EU could do to help Kosovo’s economy now, apart from giving money and advice. Both will be controversial. First, it should help the farm sector, which is where most Kosovars work. It is hugely inefficient but has potential for quick improvements. With EU farm aid and better market access, Kosovo could start selling fruit, vegetables and meat abroad. Second, the EU should keep its labour markets open: one in five Kosovo households relies on remittances from abroad, and they probably contribute more to Kosovo’s economy than all foreign aid put together.
Katinka Barysch is deputy director of the Centre for European Reform.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
The EU in Kosovo: Learning to let go
By Tomas Valasek
Here’s a secret about Kosovo’s independence – it is not real; not yet anyway. Without outside help, Kosovo would not function today. But at the same time, the new EU mission will have to justify its presence in the eyes of the Kosovo people. It must make every effort to transfer responsibility for running the new country to the Kosovars.
At its birth on February 17th, the country lacked most ministries, or, for that matter, a sustainable economy (the official unemployment rate is around 40 per cent). A veritable who’s who of international organisations takes care of everything from sanitation to security. Some 17,000 NATO peacekeepers make sure that violence does not erupt between the Albanian majority and the 130,000 Serbs still living in Kosovo. UNMIK (the United Nation’s interim administration mission in Kosovo) took charge of most government business after the 1999 mission. As part of UNMIK, a group of officials and experts from various EU countries has run much of Kosovo’s economic policy, from devising privatisation to collecting customs revenues. About 20 per cent of Kosovo’s GDP directly depend on foreign aid. UNMIK has also negotiated regional and bilateral agreements for Kosovo, for example on trade, energy and transport. In addition, an army of volunteers working for 300-odd different NGOs look after Kosovo’s 2 million inhabitants.
So for the foreseeable future, Kosovo will need heavy international assistance, both financial and in the form of experts on the ground. But here’s the rub: staying too long may be equally, if not more, counterproductive than leaving early. And this holds especially true for the new EU mission: the 2,000 EU judges, administrators, and police, who will soon replace the UN in Kosovo. The EU gave them an ambitious mandate: they are to not only advise the new Kosovo authorities but also to ‘independently [if necessary]… ensure the rule of law”. They’ll even have the authority to reverse or annul decisions by Kosovo authorities. Kosovo may not quite be a protectorate like the one the EU runs in Bosnia. But no independent country outside the EU gives Brussels the right to annul its domestic legislation.
The EU’s extensive powers in Kosovo will be tolerated by the country’s government. Because its legal case for separation from Serbia will always be disputed, the government’s best chance for respect and recognition is to make a success of its independence. That means using EU money intelligently to build up the economy, guaranteeing the human rights of the Serbian and other minorities, instilling the rule of law and clamping down on organised crime and corruption. Pristina will need the EU’s assistance to accomplish all this, so it will strive to be on good terms with Brussels.
The people of Kosovo – that’s another story. They strove to be independent, not to end up in a situation where the EU administrators have the last say. If the EU mission is too heavy-handed, it will cause resentment among ordinary Kosovars. Already, anti-EU graffiti has appeared in the streets in Pristina. To makes matters even more delicate, the UN, from which the EU takes over, has a terrible reputation in Kosovo. In eight years of running this tiny country, the size of a small Baltic republic, it has not managed to guarantee basic services like around-the-clock electricity, despite multi-million dollar investments into the power sector. Kai Eide, formerly a high-ranking UN official, suggested in 2005 that the UN mission itself had become an obstacle to building Kosovo’s economy and governance, and he advised the UN to leave.
So the EU is marching into a quandary. Kosovo needs its help and assistance – and the EU needs Kosovo to succeed. But by trying too hard, the EU could make a bad situation worse. The only thing worse than a Kosovo poor and badly governed is a Kosovo poor, badly governed, and hostile to the EU. For the EU to make its Kosovo mission a success, it needs to treat Kosovo with caution and respect. It needs be firm with Pristina if the government fails to respect minority rights and root out crime and corruption. But otherwise, it should try to reduce interference and concentrate on building up local administrative capacity. At every step, the EU needs to make clear to the Kosovars that it is there to help with the transition, not to permanently set the agenda.
Lastly, the EU needs to demonstrate its usefulness to the Kosovars, to show that its presence there makes a material difference to their lives. The EU should not assume that Kosovo’s dependence on foreign aid and expertise in itself justifies its mission in the eyes of the local population. A couple of tangible successes would help. None would probably be more important than finally fixing the electricity grid, thus giving Kosovo’s economy a much needed boost.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at Centre for European Reform
Here’s a secret about Kosovo’s independence – it is not real; not yet anyway. Without outside help, Kosovo would not function today. But at the same time, the new EU mission will have to justify its presence in the eyes of the Kosovo people. It must make every effort to transfer responsibility for running the new country to the Kosovars.
At its birth on February 17th, the country lacked most ministries, or, for that matter, a sustainable economy (the official unemployment rate is around 40 per cent). A veritable who’s who of international organisations takes care of everything from sanitation to security. Some 17,000 NATO peacekeepers make sure that violence does not erupt between the Albanian majority and the 130,000 Serbs still living in Kosovo. UNMIK (the United Nation’s interim administration mission in Kosovo) took charge of most government business after the 1999 mission. As part of UNMIK, a group of officials and experts from various EU countries has run much of Kosovo’s economic policy, from devising privatisation to collecting customs revenues. About 20 per cent of Kosovo’s GDP directly depend on foreign aid. UNMIK has also negotiated regional and bilateral agreements for Kosovo, for example on trade, energy and transport. In addition, an army of volunteers working for 300-odd different NGOs look after Kosovo’s 2 million inhabitants.
So for the foreseeable future, Kosovo will need heavy international assistance, both financial and in the form of experts on the ground. But here’s the rub: staying too long may be equally, if not more, counterproductive than leaving early. And this holds especially true for the new EU mission: the 2,000 EU judges, administrators, and police, who will soon replace the UN in Kosovo. The EU gave them an ambitious mandate: they are to not only advise the new Kosovo authorities but also to ‘independently [if necessary]… ensure the rule of law”. They’ll even have the authority to reverse or annul decisions by Kosovo authorities. Kosovo may not quite be a protectorate like the one the EU runs in Bosnia. But no independent country outside the EU gives Brussels the right to annul its domestic legislation.
The EU’s extensive powers in Kosovo will be tolerated by the country’s government. Because its legal case for separation from Serbia will always be disputed, the government’s best chance for respect and recognition is to make a success of its independence. That means using EU money intelligently to build up the economy, guaranteeing the human rights of the Serbian and other minorities, instilling the rule of law and clamping down on organised crime and corruption. Pristina will need the EU’s assistance to accomplish all this, so it will strive to be on good terms with Brussels.
The people of Kosovo – that’s another story. They strove to be independent, not to end up in a situation where the EU administrators have the last say. If the EU mission is too heavy-handed, it will cause resentment among ordinary Kosovars. Already, anti-EU graffiti has appeared in the streets in Pristina. To makes matters even more delicate, the UN, from which the EU takes over, has a terrible reputation in Kosovo. In eight years of running this tiny country, the size of a small Baltic republic, it has not managed to guarantee basic services like around-the-clock electricity, despite multi-million dollar investments into the power sector. Kai Eide, formerly a high-ranking UN official, suggested in 2005 that the UN mission itself had become an obstacle to building Kosovo’s economy and governance, and he advised the UN to leave.
So the EU is marching into a quandary. Kosovo needs its help and assistance – and the EU needs Kosovo to succeed. But by trying too hard, the EU could make a bad situation worse. The only thing worse than a Kosovo poor and badly governed is a Kosovo poor, badly governed, and hostile to the EU. For the EU to make its Kosovo mission a success, it needs to treat Kosovo with caution and respect. It needs be firm with Pristina if the government fails to respect minority rights and root out crime and corruption. But otherwise, it should try to reduce interference and concentrate on building up local administrative capacity. At every step, the EU needs to make clear to the Kosovars that it is there to help with the transition, not to permanently set the agenda.
Lastly, the EU needs to demonstrate its usefulness to the Kosovars, to show that its presence there makes a material difference to their lives. The EU should not assume that Kosovo’s dependence on foreign aid and expertise in itself justifies its mission in the eyes of the local population. A couple of tangible successes would help. None would probably be more important than finally fixing the electricity grid, thus giving Kosovo’s economy a much needed boost.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at Centre for European Reform
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Time for the Export-Weltmeister to start consuming
by Simon Tilford
Too many Europeans are blaming the US for the economic slowdown in Europe, as if everything would have been fine if only the Americans were not so irresponsible. This is complacent. The European economy would have faced a tricky rebalancing irrespective of the credit crisis. It is not sustainable for one group of EU economies to provide a disproportionate share of EU domestic demand while others run ever bigger current account surpluses.
Europeans are right to highlight the fact that the EU economy is a comparable size to the US one. However, European policy-makers and central bankers are on somewhat shakier ground when they queue up to claim that the EU economy is fundamentally more balanced that its US counterpart. Europeans should ask themselves the following question: would a US economy growing at the same pace as the EU economy did in 2007 be as easily rattled by a financial crisis in Europe and fall in the value of the euro as the European economy has been by the credit crisis in the US and the fall in the dollar? The answer is clearly no.
The European economy as a whole has become more flexible in recent years. Labour markets are now more efficient, employment rates (those employed as a percentage of the working age population) are up and many product markets are now much more competitive. These developments have helped accelerate the diffusion of new technologies. However, a look at the structure of EU economic growth demonstrates why the current recovery is so fragile, and why Europeans are wrong to focus so strongly on external shocks for explanations.
The UK and Spain, but also France and the new member-states have accounted for a very large share of the growth in EU domestic demand this decade. Consumption in these economies has grown more rapidly than output. The result has been a steady increase in their current account deficits. Spain’s hit an estimated 9 per cent of GDP in 2007, the UK’s 4 per cent, whereas deficits in Italy and France were around 2.5 per cent 1.5 per cent respectively. External deficits across the new member-states are big, in some cases startlingly so.
Over this period, another group of member-states led by Germany, but also including the Netherlands and Sweden, have seen their output expand much more rapidly than domestic consumption, with the result that their surpluses have ballooned. Germany’s and Sweden’s stood at 6 per cent of GDP in 2007, and that of the Netherlands was 7 per cent. Much of the rise in their combined surplus since 2000 has been with other members of the EU. In effect, these economies have been a huge drag on the European economy, and have not been, as they are sometimes erroneously portrayed, drivers of economic growth.
Economies cannot rely indefinitely on exports for economic stimulus, as other economies cannot run huge deficits indefinitely. A number of the countries that have generated strong growth in domestic demand must now rebalance their economies. The construction boom in Spain that has done so much to drive investment and private consumption in that country has ended and will depress Spanish consumption, perhaps for many years. For its part, the build-up of debt that contributed considerably to the strong performance of the UK economy in recent years has now run its course. France and Italy are in no position to take up the slack, not least because of their weak fiscal positions but also because they need to hold down wage settlements in order to prevent any further loss of competitiveness to the Germans. Neither are the new member-states, whose imbalances are starting to attract the attentions of the financial markets.
The countries that have relied on exports to the rest of the EU for a big chunk of their overall growth are going to have to rebalance and contribute to EU growth rather than being a drag on it. The prospects are not good. For example, for years German economists and politicians have been saying that Germany needed to regain competitiveness by ruthlessly holding down costs. This, they argued, would boost exports and feed through into investment and jobs. There has been a pick-up in investment and expansion of employment, but both remain vulnerable to a downturn in external demand because there has been no recovery in consumption. German private consumption actually fell in 2007 and domestic demand grew at half the pace of GDP. German real wages are likely to rise this year for the first time since 2003, but consumer confidence remains exceptionally low.
The EU needs to recognise that one of its core economic challenges is the excessive dependence of Germany and a number of other economies on exports to drive growth. The growth strategies of these countries should not be held up as examples for others to emulate. A huge current account surplus does not necessarily indicate an economy is ‘competitive’. It can also point to the weakness of domestic demand.
Simon Tilford is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.
Too many Europeans are blaming the US for the economic slowdown in Europe, as if everything would have been fine if only the Americans were not so irresponsible. This is complacent. The European economy would have faced a tricky rebalancing irrespective of the credit crisis. It is not sustainable for one group of EU economies to provide a disproportionate share of EU domestic demand while others run ever bigger current account surpluses.
Europeans are right to highlight the fact that the EU economy is a comparable size to the US one. However, European policy-makers and central bankers are on somewhat shakier ground when they queue up to claim that the EU economy is fundamentally more balanced that its US counterpart. Europeans should ask themselves the following question: would a US economy growing at the same pace as the EU economy did in 2007 be as easily rattled by a financial crisis in Europe and fall in the value of the euro as the European economy has been by the credit crisis in the US and the fall in the dollar? The answer is clearly no.
The European economy as a whole has become more flexible in recent years. Labour markets are now more efficient, employment rates (those employed as a percentage of the working age population) are up and many product markets are now much more competitive. These developments have helped accelerate the diffusion of new technologies. However, a look at the structure of EU economic growth demonstrates why the current recovery is so fragile, and why Europeans are wrong to focus so strongly on external shocks for explanations.
The UK and Spain, but also France and the new member-states have accounted for a very large share of the growth in EU domestic demand this decade. Consumption in these economies has grown more rapidly than output. The result has been a steady increase in their current account deficits. Spain’s hit an estimated 9 per cent of GDP in 2007, the UK’s 4 per cent, whereas deficits in Italy and France were around 2.5 per cent 1.5 per cent respectively. External deficits across the new member-states are big, in some cases startlingly so.
Over this period, another group of member-states led by Germany, but also including the Netherlands and Sweden, have seen their output expand much more rapidly than domestic consumption, with the result that their surpluses have ballooned. Germany’s and Sweden’s stood at 6 per cent of GDP in 2007, and that of the Netherlands was 7 per cent. Much of the rise in their combined surplus since 2000 has been with other members of the EU. In effect, these economies have been a huge drag on the European economy, and have not been, as they are sometimes erroneously portrayed, drivers of economic growth.
Economies cannot rely indefinitely on exports for economic stimulus, as other economies cannot run huge deficits indefinitely. A number of the countries that have generated strong growth in domestic demand must now rebalance their economies. The construction boom in Spain that has done so much to drive investment and private consumption in that country has ended and will depress Spanish consumption, perhaps for many years. For its part, the build-up of debt that contributed considerably to the strong performance of the UK economy in recent years has now run its course. France and Italy are in no position to take up the slack, not least because of their weak fiscal positions but also because they need to hold down wage settlements in order to prevent any further loss of competitiveness to the Germans. Neither are the new member-states, whose imbalances are starting to attract the attentions of the financial markets.
The countries that have relied on exports to the rest of the EU for a big chunk of their overall growth are going to have to rebalance and contribute to EU growth rather than being a drag on it. The prospects are not good. For example, for years German economists and politicians have been saying that Germany needed to regain competitiveness by ruthlessly holding down costs. This, they argued, would boost exports and feed through into investment and jobs. There has been a pick-up in investment and expansion of employment, but both remain vulnerable to a downturn in external demand because there has been no recovery in consumption. German private consumption actually fell in 2007 and domestic demand grew at half the pace of GDP. German real wages are likely to rise this year for the first time since 2003, but consumer confidence remains exceptionally low.
The EU needs to recognise that one of its core economic challenges is the excessive dependence of Germany and a number of other economies on exports to drive growth. The growth strategies of these countries should not be held up as examples for others to emulate. A huge current account surplus does not necessarily indicate an economy is ‘competitive’. It can also point to the weakness of domestic demand.
Simon Tilford is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.
Friday, February 08, 2008
The Slovak roadblock for the Lisbon treaty
by Tomas Valasek
Fear the unknown unknowns, the former US defence minister Donald Rumsfeld once said (before falling victim to his own adage). There is a lesson in his words for the framers of the Lisbon treaty. The document unexpectedly encountered trouble in Slovakia. Twice this week, the country's parliament came close to voting it down. A third scheduled vote on Thursday 7th February was postponed indefinitely.
Until the end of January, little in Slovak politics hinted at the coming storm. The Lisbon treaty enjoys robust support in the parliament, with only one smallish party, the Christian Democrats, saying they would vote against it. In fact, Slovakia is one of the 18 countries that had ratified the previous, more controversial, constitutional treaty.
Then, however, the Lisbon treaty got caught up in an unrelated political controversy, something that has happened to other EU treaties in the past. In this case, the government submitted the Lisbon treaty alongside a disputed media law. The opposition has insisted that it would reject both pieces of legislation unless the media law was changed.
The law in question is indeed problematic. Its wording is so convoluted that it could easily be abused to restrict the freedom of speech. The European Federation of Journalists has criticised the legislation, and the OSCE has urged the Slovak foreign minister, Jan Kubis, to convince his government to change it.
But that still does not explain why the Lisbon treaty had to be taken hostage. What underlies the Lisbon treaty controversy in Slovakia is a complete breakdown in communication between the opposition and the government. The three-party coalition headed by Prime Minister Robert Fico has a comfortable majority, which it has used over the past year to roll back many of the previous government's reforms. Fico’s coalition barely disguises its contempt for the opposition, and there is precious little debate, much less co-operation, on any new legislation.
The leaders of the opposition a coalition of three conservative parties know that they'd be powerless to stop the media law if it was put to a straight up-or-down vote. Worse, they fear that the media law will be used to further weaken them by muzzling sympathetic journalists. So they have decided to stop it the only way left open by linking it to the Lisbon treaty. Under Slovak law, the ratification of EU treaties requires a constitutional majority and hence the opposition's co-operation. The treaty is the only piece of legislation which gives the opposition leverage over the government so it has seized this opportunity to stop the media law.
Over the past two weeks, Slovakia's political leaders repeated the same routine several times: the government and the opposition talk, they fail to make any progress, the government puts the treaty to a vote, the opposition walks out, the government withdraws the treaty, it talks to the opposition again, and on it goes. The longer the confrontation drags on, the more nervous observers in Brussels and EU capitals become. Over the weekend, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso called the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda, to voice his concerns.
The most likely outcome of this drama is rather anti-climatic: the government will probably put off the vote on the Lisbon treaty until later in the spring. There is no special reason to hurry: the UK parliament is not expected to vote on the treaty until the summer at the earliest. By then, it is hoped, relations between the opposition and the government in Slovakia will have improved sufficiently to allow for the treaty's passage. The opposition, after all, likes the treaty; they negotiated its predecessor, the constitutional treaty.
But the broader message to European capitals and to Brussels is clear: the fact that the Lisbon treaty will be approved by parliamentary votes rather than referenda (with the exception of Ireland) does not make the document immune to domestic politics. Parliaments everywhere can and will play political football with it. Such controversies will not be about the content of the treaty itself (much as its opponents would like to believe). But it does mean that Barroso and other supporters of the treaty could be facing many a sleepless night over the coming months.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
Fear the unknown unknowns, the former US defence minister Donald Rumsfeld once said (before falling victim to his own adage). There is a lesson in his words for the framers of the Lisbon treaty. The document unexpectedly encountered trouble in Slovakia. Twice this week, the country's parliament came close to voting it down. A third scheduled vote on Thursday 7th February was postponed indefinitely.
Until the end of January, little in Slovak politics hinted at the coming storm. The Lisbon treaty enjoys robust support in the parliament, with only one smallish party, the Christian Democrats, saying they would vote against it. In fact, Slovakia is one of the 18 countries that had ratified the previous, more controversial, constitutional treaty.
Then, however, the Lisbon treaty got caught up in an unrelated political controversy, something that has happened to other EU treaties in the past. In this case, the government submitted the Lisbon treaty alongside a disputed media law. The opposition has insisted that it would reject both pieces of legislation unless the media law was changed.
The law in question is indeed problematic. Its wording is so convoluted that it could easily be abused to restrict the freedom of speech. The European Federation of Journalists has criticised the legislation, and the OSCE has urged the Slovak foreign minister, Jan Kubis, to convince his government to change it.
But that still does not explain why the Lisbon treaty had to be taken hostage. What underlies the Lisbon treaty controversy in Slovakia is a complete breakdown in communication between the opposition and the government. The three-party coalition headed by Prime Minister Robert Fico has a comfortable majority, which it has used over the past year to roll back many of the previous government's reforms. Fico’s coalition barely disguises its contempt for the opposition, and there is precious little debate, much less co-operation, on any new legislation.
The leaders of the opposition a coalition of three conservative parties know that they'd be powerless to stop the media law if it was put to a straight up-or-down vote. Worse, they fear that the media law will be used to further weaken them by muzzling sympathetic journalists. So they have decided to stop it the only way left open by linking it to the Lisbon treaty. Under Slovak law, the ratification of EU treaties requires a constitutional majority and hence the opposition's co-operation. The treaty is the only piece of legislation which gives the opposition leverage over the government so it has seized this opportunity to stop the media law.
Over the past two weeks, Slovakia's political leaders repeated the same routine several times: the government and the opposition talk, they fail to make any progress, the government puts the treaty to a vote, the opposition walks out, the government withdraws the treaty, it talks to the opposition again, and on it goes. The longer the confrontation drags on, the more nervous observers in Brussels and EU capitals become. Over the weekend, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso called the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda, to voice his concerns.
The most likely outcome of this drama is rather anti-climatic: the government will probably put off the vote on the Lisbon treaty until later in the spring. There is no special reason to hurry: the UK parliament is not expected to vote on the treaty until the summer at the earliest. By then, it is hoped, relations between the opposition and the government in Slovakia will have improved sufficiently to allow for the treaty's passage. The opposition, after all, likes the treaty; they negotiated its predecessor, the constitutional treaty.
But the broader message to European capitals and to Brussels is clear: the fact that the Lisbon treaty will be approved by parliamentary votes rather than referenda (with the exception of Ireland) does not make the document immune to domestic politics. Parliaments everywhere can and will play political football with it. Such controversies will not be about the content of the treaty itself (much as its opponents would like to believe). But it does mean that Barroso and other supporters of the treaty could be facing many a sleepless night over the coming months.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
Monday, February 04, 2008
The Egypt-Gaza border breach: a wake up call?
by Clara Marina O'Donnell
Events on the ground in Israel and Gaza have taken a new turn for the worse. But the latest crisis could lead to a more constructive approach in solving the Middle East stand-off. On January 23rd, after Israel further strengthened its siege on Gaza by closing its borders completely, Hamas blew up sections of the border with Egypt. During the following two weeks hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed back and forth into Egypt uncontrolled. Most Gazans bought badly needed food and other supplies. But Palestinian militant groups also took advantage of the chaos to stock up on weapons and some tried to infiltrate Israel through the Egyptian border.
The cost for Israel has been high. This morning (February 4th) two suicide bombers killed one and injured over ten in the southern Israeli city of Dimona. The bombing was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year and the attackers (reported as Fatah-allied militants) are suspected to have taken advantage of the border breach to reach Israel.
Potentially, the Gaza-Egypt border crisis could actually be salutory for Palestinian politics and the wider conflict. International players, including the EU, the US and Egypt, are now supporting a plan from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, to re-open not only the Egypt-Gaza border, but all of Gaza’s borders. Most outsiders, including the EU and the US, disapprove of Israel’s border closures. They believe the humanitarian cost is too high. So in efforts to lift the siege outsiders are backing President Abbas’s team in the PA who have suggested that PA forces should take charge of all of Gaza’s crossing points (Israel refuses to deal with Hamas border guards). In support of the PA initiative the EU has even offered to reinstate its own border monitors on the Egypt-Gaza border crossing (the EU withdrew its monitors when Hamas took charge in Gaza).
The internationally backed PA plan not only has the potential to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it could also be a useful first step to a wider reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. For PA border guards (and EU monitors) to function at Gaza’s crossings, some form of agreement will be necessary between Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas, whose forces are in control on the ground in Gaza. Since June leaders from Hamas and Fatah have not spoken to each other. But Hamas has been keen to talk in principle and lower-level intermediaries in both parties have been reaching out in attempts to end the current crisis. The border breach could be the catalyst for co-operation.
The border breach confirmed that Hamas cannot be eclipsed or ignored. Despite being shunned for two years by the international community, Hamas is still standing, and it is undermining Israeli sanctions. Only with its cooperation can Gaza’s border crossings be opened, and ultimately, it will also have to play a role in any meaningful peace agreement.
The EU and the US are presumably aware that sending PA border guards to Gaza will require some form of cooperation with Hamas. So by supporting the initiative, the EU and the US are, in effect, making a first step towards ending their own policy of isolating Hamas. Egypt has already crossed the rubicon. Having realised the need to involve Hamas in solving the Egypt-Gaza border crisis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak invited Fatah and Hamas leaders to Cairo last week to encourage a reconciliation between the two groups.
An agreement on opening Gaza’s borders is far from a done deal. Despite Egyptian efforts, both Hamas leaders and Abbas (in particular) have so far been unwilling to be conciliatory. And even if a Fatah-Hamas deal is reached, Israel will still need to be convinced to re-open its side of Gaza’s borders.
Israel will certainly protest. But the government will be in a difficult position and might see the potential advantages to such a deal. The suicide bombing has showed Israel the costly unintended consequences of strict sanctions. Israel might want to re-consider its boycott policy. In addition, if Israel refuses to accept a PA-Hamas deal, the government will face the uncomfortable prospect of seeing Egypt and Hamas reaching an agreement on the Egypt-Gaza border alone or Hamas continuing to breach the Egypt-Gaza border violently. Either way, Israel’s boycott and security will be undermined.
There is a sense of urgency. The attack on a wall speaks volumes about the misery and passions bottled up in Gaza. The human suffering is increasing radicalisation among its residents, and reducing support for President Abbas amongst the Palestinians in general. While Hamas is isolated and no border agreement is reached, Israel is vulnerable to further border breaches and penetrations by Palestinian militants through Egypt. Today’s suicide bombing will make it harder for conciliatory forces to gain the upper had, but outsiders, including the EU, should take advantage of every opportunity to encourage a change in the current course of events.
Clara Marina O'Donnell is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform
Events on the ground in Israel and Gaza have taken a new turn for the worse. But the latest crisis could lead to a more constructive approach in solving the Middle East stand-off. On January 23rd, after Israel further strengthened its siege on Gaza by closing its borders completely, Hamas blew up sections of the border with Egypt. During the following two weeks hundreds of thousands of Palestinians streamed back and forth into Egypt uncontrolled. Most Gazans bought badly needed food and other supplies. But Palestinian militant groups also took advantage of the chaos to stock up on weapons and some tried to infiltrate Israel through the Egyptian border.
The cost for Israel has been high. This morning (February 4th) two suicide bombers killed one and injured over ten in the southern Israeli city of Dimona. The bombing was the first suicide attack in Israel in a year and the attackers (reported as Fatah-allied militants) are suspected to have taken advantage of the border breach to reach Israel.
Potentially, the Gaza-Egypt border crisis could actually be salutory for Palestinian politics and the wider conflict. International players, including the EU, the US and Egypt, are now supporting a plan from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank, to re-open not only the Egypt-Gaza border, but all of Gaza’s borders. Most outsiders, including the EU and the US, disapprove of Israel’s border closures. They believe the humanitarian cost is too high. So in efforts to lift the siege outsiders are backing President Abbas’s team in the PA who have suggested that PA forces should take charge of all of Gaza’s crossing points (Israel refuses to deal with Hamas border guards). In support of the PA initiative the EU has even offered to reinstate its own border monitors on the Egypt-Gaza border crossing (the EU withdrew its monitors when Hamas took charge in Gaza).
The internationally backed PA plan not only has the potential to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it could also be a useful first step to a wider reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. For PA border guards (and EU monitors) to function at Gaza’s crossings, some form of agreement will be necessary between Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas, whose forces are in control on the ground in Gaza. Since June leaders from Hamas and Fatah have not spoken to each other. But Hamas has been keen to talk in principle and lower-level intermediaries in both parties have been reaching out in attempts to end the current crisis. The border breach could be the catalyst for co-operation.
The border breach confirmed that Hamas cannot be eclipsed or ignored. Despite being shunned for two years by the international community, Hamas is still standing, and it is undermining Israeli sanctions. Only with its cooperation can Gaza’s border crossings be opened, and ultimately, it will also have to play a role in any meaningful peace agreement.
The EU and the US are presumably aware that sending PA border guards to Gaza will require some form of cooperation with Hamas. So by supporting the initiative, the EU and the US are, in effect, making a first step towards ending their own policy of isolating Hamas. Egypt has already crossed the rubicon. Having realised the need to involve Hamas in solving the Egypt-Gaza border crisis, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak invited Fatah and Hamas leaders to Cairo last week to encourage a reconciliation between the two groups.
An agreement on opening Gaza’s borders is far from a done deal. Despite Egyptian efforts, both Hamas leaders and Abbas (in particular) have so far been unwilling to be conciliatory. And even if a Fatah-Hamas deal is reached, Israel will still need to be convinced to re-open its side of Gaza’s borders.
Israel will certainly protest. But the government will be in a difficult position and might see the potential advantages to such a deal. The suicide bombing has showed Israel the costly unintended consequences of strict sanctions. Israel might want to re-consider its boycott policy. In addition, if Israel refuses to accept a PA-Hamas deal, the government will face the uncomfortable prospect of seeing Egypt and Hamas reaching an agreement on the Egypt-Gaza border alone or Hamas continuing to breach the Egypt-Gaza border violently. Either way, Israel’s boycott and security will be undermined.
There is a sense of urgency. The attack on a wall speaks volumes about the misery and passions bottled up in Gaza. The human suffering is increasing radicalisation among its residents, and reducing support for President Abbas amongst the Palestinians in general. While Hamas is isolated and no border agreement is reached, Israel is vulnerable to further border breaches and penetrations by Palestinian militants through Egypt. Today’s suicide bombing will make it harder for conciliatory forces to gain the upper had, but outsiders, including the EU, should take advantage of every opportunity to encourage a change in the current course of events.
Clara Marina O'Donnell is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform
Friday, January 25, 2008
A new phase in EU-Iran diplomacy
by Tomas Valasek
The US caused a small earthquake in the foreign policy circles when it announced, in November 2007, that it believes that Iran is no longer producing nuclear weapons. It was a massive departure from the previous, 2005 national intelligence assessment (NIE), which found Iran guilty of producing the bomb. Anyway one looks at it, the new NIE is certainly good news. It implies that the Middle East is a somewhat safer place than previously believed, and it puts off the possibility of a US military strike on Iran, with its certain destabilising effect on Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Does it also mean that Javier Solana should declare victory and call off EU negotiations to stop the Iranian enrichment programme?
Not so fast. While Iran seems to have suspended weapons production in 2003 (or so Washington now believes), it also continues to enrich uranium on a scale inconsistent with its energy needs – it is building facilities to make more enriched uranium than it needs for its power production. That raises suspicions that Tehran’s true intent still remains to produce fuel for nuclear bombs. And because enrichment is the most difficult part of producing weapons, Iran can afford to stop working on the actual bomb and resume work only when it has made enough fuel. That is why the UN Security Council continues to take a dim view of Iran’s plans, and it is poised to pass a third round of sanctions (Iran is already in violation of two previous resolutions calling on it to halt enrichment).
But the new intelligence assessment is, in a way, a welcome break for the EU’s diplomacy. For all his valiant efforts, Javier Solana, the EU high representative, found progress with Tehran very hard to achieve. Iran is a country with a long history of deceit by and disappointment in foreign powers. This history has bred a mindset of suspicion about outsiders, which is now colouring the EU-Iranian talks on the country’s nuclear programme. Iran is also an incredibly opaque country, with power struggles taking place behind the scenes which the outsiders understand only poorly. This matters – the nuclear programme is a domestic political issue in Iran. Europe would like to understand better and perhaps exploit the fissures between the various actors. But that is proving very difficult.
With a relatively weak deck of cards in his hands, Solana has set out to win the trust of his counterparts in Iran, and to gradually change their views on nuclear bombs. At every meeting Solana points out patiently that Iran stands to lose more than to gain from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that they do not bring prestige and that they may in fact weaken Iran’s security by destabilising the neighbourhood. The philosophy behind Solana’s approach is simple – he wants to win an ally in the Tehran government. Only an insider can turn around Iran’s thinking on nuclear weapons; Solana himself cannot. And in his long-time counterpart, former Iranian negotiator, Ali Larijani, Solana found an attentive ear, if not necessarily an ally.
The limitations of the strategy are obvious. It is not clear that any Iranian negotiator, no matter how well Solana does at winning him over, can turn around the Tehran government’s position on nuclear weapons so long as the top leaders remain deeply suspicious of the West. The second reason for pessimism is that the Iranians of course understand Solana’s game. When he appeared to be making progress with Larijani, and when Larijani appeared to be offering the faintest glimmer of hope for a breakthrough, he was replaced. With that one act, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, undid much of the progress that the EU had been able to accomplish to date.
The EU did win two significant victories, one in the form of gaining US support for its negotiating efforts, and the other in the form of two (soon to be three) rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. These have come as somewhat of a rude shock to Iran. Only a few years ago, Iran had been able to defeat a Western effort to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, the NPT, at a review conference in 2005. The Iranians had reasons to believe that because of the unpopularity of the United States, and because of what they believed to be a generally supportive stance from Russia and China, they would be able to avoid UN sanctions. That turned out not be the case; Russia and China have allowed the UN Security Council sanctions to pass. That has shown Iran’s global position to be weaker than Tehran has generally thought, and Solana’s people believe that it made Iran more willing to negotiate.
Despite these partial successes, the odds of a breakthrough on Iran seemed long, at least until the new US intelligence assessment came out late last year. Since then, a slew of events within Iran gave some hope that a change may be in the offing.
It turns out that the best thing to do about Iran may be: nothing. The moment that US pressure on Iran ceased (with the release of the new NIE), President Ahmadinejad started getting into trouble. He had previously covered up years of inept governance by pointing at the US threat and posing as a defender of Iran against the bellicose West. But with the West sheathing its swords for now, the ordinary Iranians’ attention turned to other things – like the 17 per cent inflation rate (up from 12 per cent in 2006), an estimated 16 per cent unemployment rate, or the lack of basic commodities like gas or petrol in what is one of the world’s most resource-rich countries. Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, has recently taken to openly criticising Ahmadinejad’s economic policies. The president responded the way most populists do, by throwing money at the problem – he increased government spending, mostly on social programmes, by 17 per cent in the 2008 budget. But this is only likely to exacerbate Iran’s economic woes in the long run.
One wonders if the new NIE just might hasten Ahmadinejad’s departure. The president has considerable time left in office, and may yet in theory regain his footing. But Iran will hold legislative elections in March, and, on current trends, the president stands to lose much of his support in the parliament. And with the economy in trouble, even Ahmadinejad will find it difficult to stage a comeback. His downfall would not end the nuclear programme per se, but it would most probably bring back to power people like Ali Larijani, who seem more open to a negotiated settlement. If this optimistic scenario does unfold, it may turn out that the EU’s biggest achievement in Iran to date lied in buying sufficient time until the US eased pressure on Iran, allowing Ahmadinejad’s domestic woes to play themselves out.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
The US caused a small earthquake in the foreign policy circles when it announced, in November 2007, that it believes that Iran is no longer producing nuclear weapons. It was a massive departure from the previous, 2005 national intelligence assessment (NIE), which found Iran guilty of producing the bomb. Anyway one looks at it, the new NIE is certainly good news. It implies that the Middle East is a somewhat safer place than previously believed, and it puts off the possibility of a US military strike on Iran, with its certain destabilising effect on Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Does it also mean that Javier Solana should declare victory and call off EU negotiations to stop the Iranian enrichment programme?
Not so fast. While Iran seems to have suspended weapons production in 2003 (or so Washington now believes), it also continues to enrich uranium on a scale inconsistent with its energy needs – it is building facilities to make more enriched uranium than it needs for its power production. That raises suspicions that Tehran’s true intent still remains to produce fuel for nuclear bombs. And because enrichment is the most difficult part of producing weapons, Iran can afford to stop working on the actual bomb and resume work only when it has made enough fuel. That is why the UN Security Council continues to take a dim view of Iran’s plans, and it is poised to pass a third round of sanctions (Iran is already in violation of two previous resolutions calling on it to halt enrichment).
But the new intelligence assessment is, in a way, a welcome break for the EU’s diplomacy. For all his valiant efforts, Javier Solana, the EU high representative, found progress with Tehran very hard to achieve. Iran is a country with a long history of deceit by and disappointment in foreign powers. This history has bred a mindset of suspicion about outsiders, which is now colouring the EU-Iranian talks on the country’s nuclear programme. Iran is also an incredibly opaque country, with power struggles taking place behind the scenes which the outsiders understand only poorly. This matters – the nuclear programme is a domestic political issue in Iran. Europe would like to understand better and perhaps exploit the fissures between the various actors. But that is proving very difficult.
With a relatively weak deck of cards in his hands, Solana has set out to win the trust of his counterparts in Iran, and to gradually change their views on nuclear bombs. At every meeting Solana points out patiently that Iran stands to lose more than to gain from acquiring nuclear weapons, and that they do not bring prestige and that they may in fact weaken Iran’s security by destabilising the neighbourhood. The philosophy behind Solana’s approach is simple – he wants to win an ally in the Tehran government. Only an insider can turn around Iran’s thinking on nuclear weapons; Solana himself cannot. And in his long-time counterpart, former Iranian negotiator, Ali Larijani, Solana found an attentive ear, if not necessarily an ally.
The limitations of the strategy are obvious. It is not clear that any Iranian negotiator, no matter how well Solana does at winning him over, can turn around the Tehran government’s position on nuclear weapons so long as the top leaders remain deeply suspicious of the West. The second reason for pessimism is that the Iranians of course understand Solana’s game. When he appeared to be making progress with Larijani, and when Larijani appeared to be offering the faintest glimmer of hope for a breakthrough, he was replaced. With that one act, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, undid much of the progress that the EU had been able to accomplish to date.
The EU did win two significant victories, one in the form of gaining US support for its negotiating efforts, and the other in the form of two (soon to be three) rounds of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. These have come as somewhat of a rude shock to Iran. Only a few years ago, Iran had been able to defeat a Western effort to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime, the NPT, at a review conference in 2005. The Iranians had reasons to believe that because of the unpopularity of the United States, and because of what they believed to be a generally supportive stance from Russia and China, they would be able to avoid UN sanctions. That turned out not be the case; Russia and China have allowed the UN Security Council sanctions to pass. That has shown Iran’s global position to be weaker than Tehran has generally thought, and Solana’s people believe that it made Iran more willing to negotiate.
Despite these partial successes, the odds of a breakthrough on Iran seemed long, at least until the new US intelligence assessment came out late last year. Since then, a slew of events within Iran gave some hope that a change may be in the offing.
It turns out that the best thing to do about Iran may be: nothing. The moment that US pressure on Iran ceased (with the release of the new NIE), President Ahmadinejad started getting into trouble. He had previously covered up years of inept governance by pointing at the US threat and posing as a defender of Iran against the bellicose West. But with the West sheathing its swords for now, the ordinary Iranians’ attention turned to other things – like the 17 per cent inflation rate (up from 12 per cent in 2006), an estimated 16 per cent unemployment rate, or the lack of basic commodities like gas or petrol in what is one of the world’s most resource-rich countries. Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, has recently taken to openly criticising Ahmadinejad’s economic policies. The president responded the way most populists do, by throwing money at the problem – he increased government spending, mostly on social programmes, by 17 per cent in the 2008 budget. But this is only likely to exacerbate Iran’s economic woes in the long run.
One wonders if the new NIE just might hasten Ahmadinejad’s departure. The president has considerable time left in office, and may yet in theory regain his footing. But Iran will hold legislative elections in March, and, on current trends, the president stands to lose much of his support in the parliament. And with the economy in trouble, even Ahmadinejad will find it difficult to stage a comeback. His downfall would not end the nuclear programme per se, but it would most probably bring back to power people like Ali Larijani, who seem more open to a negotiated settlement. If this optimistic scenario does unfold, it may turn out that the EU’s biggest achievement in Iran to date lied in buying sufficient time until the US eased pressure on Iran, allowing Ahmadinejad’s domestic woes to play themselves out.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Poland’s bold new foreign policy
by Charles Grant
As far as the rest of Europe was concerned, the worst thing about Poland’s Law and Justice government, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (and supported by his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski), was its foreign policy. The twins’ attitude towards Russia, Germany and – sometimes – the EU was confrontational. The Civic Platform government that took over in October is shifting Poland’s foreign policy. Its ministers often speak to the Germans without reminding them of the war. More controversially, the government is trying to build bridges with Russia. Moscow has lifted its ban on meat exports from Poland, while Warsaw has consulted the Russians about the Bush administration’s plans to deploy missile defence systems in Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk is much less enthusiastic than the Kaczynskis about missile defence.
The Civic Platform government is even contemplating a radical shift in policy on gas pipelines. With help from German companies, Gazprom plans to build the Nordstream pipeline, under the Baltic Sea, to Germany. The economics of this project are rather a mystery. It will cost much more than a new land pipeline from Russia to Germany, passing through Poland. Many Poles therefore see Nordstream as a geopolitical threat: it would allow Russia to cut off gas to Poland without blocking supplies to Germany and the rest of Europe. Poles of all political stripes have therefore attacked the planned pipeline as a threat to their national security.
But Angela Merkel’s government, though keen to see warmer relations with Warsaw, continues to back Nordstream, and the odds are that it will be built. The Germans are now trying to persuade the Poles to join the project. The gas from Nordstream will run over German land near the Polish border. A short spur could take the gas into Poland. Some members of the Civic Platform government see the undoubted geopolitical benefits of joining the project: Russia could not squeeze gas supplies to the Poles if they could draw on Nordstream gas.
But two issues are making the government hesitate before abandoning its opposition to Nordstream. One is the economics of the project. If joining Nordstream meant that Poland had to take on a significant share of the huge costs of building the Baltic pipeline, it might not be worth it. However, some Poles believe that they can play on the Germans sense of guilt – they embarked on Nordstream without consulting the Poles – to get them to pay most of the bills. The second issue is Polish politics. If Tusk’s government ‘gives in’ to the Russians by supporting their pipeline, it will be hugely controversial. Jaroslaw Kaczynski would attack the government for failing to stop Nordstream and for pandering to Russia.
Although defeated in last October’s parliamentary election, Law and Justice remains powerful. The party increased its share of the vote from 27 to 32 percent, and only lost because support for its far-right allies, the League of Polish Families and Self-Defence, collapsed. The party’s hold on the presidency means that it can veto legislation promoted by the government.
Law and Justice is already attacking Civic Platform over missile defence. Both Kaczynskis want to get American missiles onto Polish soil as quickly as possible. They believe that participation in US missile defence systems will increase the security bond between Washington and Warsaw, and provide extra insurance against potential Russian aggression.
Tusk and his foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, take a different line. They argue – in my view rightly – that missile defence would enhance American security but worsen Polish security. Poland is not threatened by any putative Iranian missiles. If the US installed missiles on Polish soil, it would stoke up Russian hostility to Poland. The Polish government is therefore telling the US that, in return for taking the missiles, it wants: new air-defence systems, such as Patriot 3, to protect the missile site; agreements from the US to protect the missile base; and American investment in the Polish defence industry. Poland is therefore diverging from the Czech government, which is due to take the radars for the US system, and is much more enthusiastic about missile defence (although public opinion in both Poland and the Czech Republic would rather opt out).
Even if the US says yes to all the Polish demands, which is unlikely, I doubt that Tusk will sign up to anything so long as George W Bush is in office. There is considerable mistrust between some senior people in the Tusk and Bush governments. Poland will probably wait till the next president takes office, see what he or she wants to do, and then take a view. That kind of caution would probably in Poland’s best interests, even though the twins will attack the government for going soft on the Russians.
Charles Grant is director of the Centre for European Reform.
As far as the rest of Europe was concerned, the worst thing about Poland’s Law and Justice government, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski (and supported by his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski), was its foreign policy. The twins’ attitude towards Russia, Germany and – sometimes – the EU was confrontational. The Civic Platform government that took over in October is shifting Poland’s foreign policy. Its ministers often speak to the Germans without reminding them of the war. More controversially, the government is trying to build bridges with Russia. Moscow has lifted its ban on meat exports from Poland, while Warsaw has consulted the Russians about the Bush administration’s plans to deploy missile defence systems in Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk is much less enthusiastic than the Kaczynskis about missile defence.
The Civic Platform government is even contemplating a radical shift in policy on gas pipelines. With help from German companies, Gazprom plans to build the Nordstream pipeline, under the Baltic Sea, to Germany. The economics of this project are rather a mystery. It will cost much more than a new land pipeline from Russia to Germany, passing through Poland. Many Poles therefore see Nordstream as a geopolitical threat: it would allow Russia to cut off gas to Poland without blocking supplies to Germany and the rest of Europe. Poles of all political stripes have therefore attacked the planned pipeline as a threat to their national security.
But Angela Merkel’s government, though keen to see warmer relations with Warsaw, continues to back Nordstream, and the odds are that it will be built. The Germans are now trying to persuade the Poles to join the project. The gas from Nordstream will run over German land near the Polish border. A short spur could take the gas into Poland. Some members of the Civic Platform government see the undoubted geopolitical benefits of joining the project: Russia could not squeeze gas supplies to the Poles if they could draw on Nordstream gas.
But two issues are making the government hesitate before abandoning its opposition to Nordstream. One is the economics of the project. If joining Nordstream meant that Poland had to take on a significant share of the huge costs of building the Baltic pipeline, it might not be worth it. However, some Poles believe that they can play on the Germans sense of guilt – they embarked on Nordstream without consulting the Poles – to get them to pay most of the bills. The second issue is Polish politics. If Tusk’s government ‘gives in’ to the Russians by supporting their pipeline, it will be hugely controversial. Jaroslaw Kaczynski would attack the government for failing to stop Nordstream and for pandering to Russia.
Although defeated in last October’s parliamentary election, Law and Justice remains powerful. The party increased its share of the vote from 27 to 32 percent, and only lost because support for its far-right allies, the League of Polish Families and Self-Defence, collapsed. The party’s hold on the presidency means that it can veto legislation promoted by the government.
Law and Justice is already attacking Civic Platform over missile defence. Both Kaczynskis want to get American missiles onto Polish soil as quickly as possible. They believe that participation in US missile defence systems will increase the security bond between Washington and Warsaw, and provide extra insurance against potential Russian aggression.
Tusk and his foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, take a different line. They argue – in my view rightly – that missile defence would enhance American security but worsen Polish security. Poland is not threatened by any putative Iranian missiles. If the US installed missiles on Polish soil, it would stoke up Russian hostility to Poland. The Polish government is therefore telling the US that, in return for taking the missiles, it wants: new air-defence systems, such as Patriot 3, to protect the missile site; agreements from the US to protect the missile base; and American investment in the Polish defence industry. Poland is therefore diverging from the Czech government, which is due to take the radars for the US system, and is much more enthusiastic about missile defence (although public opinion in both Poland and the Czech Republic would rather opt out).
Even if the US says yes to all the Polish demands, which is unlikely, I doubt that Tusk will sign up to anything so long as George W Bush is in office. There is considerable mistrust between some senior people in the Tusk and Bush governments. Poland will probably wait till the next president takes office, see what he or she wants to do, and then take a view. That kind of caution would probably in Poland’s best interests, even though the twins will attack the government for going soft on the Russians.
Charles Grant is director of the Centre for European Reform.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
What, if anything, is Europe to do about Pakistan?
by Melissa Ball and Tomas Valasek
As if to prove that “when it rains, it pours”, Pakistan took yet another step towards chaos with the assassination on December 27th of Benazir Bhutto, the country’s former prime minister. This comes on the heels of months of protests by the country’s lawyers and judges, a mounting Islamist challenge to Pakistan’s secular nature, and the increasing isolation of Pervez Musharraf’s regime. With Bhutto’s untimely death, the country’s best hope for stability – a power-sharing agreement between Bhutto and Musharraf – is no longer possible. And while Pakistan remains relatively calm for now (it could be worse), a violent regime change or even a civil war no longer seem implausible.
Pakistan matters enormously. It borders the rising powers of India and China as well as two of the world’s worst trouble spots, Afghanistan and Iran. A failed Pakistan is certain to destabilize Afghanistan, and may well derail India’s peaceful development (if the violence in the contested region of Kashmir worsens). Equally importantly for Europe, Pakistan’s northwestern region serves as training and recruiting ground for al-Qaeda terrorists. Pakistan-trained terrorists have already struck in the UK but Germans, too, were found to be training in Pakistan’s terrorist camps, and the Taliban also claims to have French and other nationalities in its ranks. Add to this a sizeable stash of nuclear weapons, and the prospect of Pakistan disintegrating into its ethnic constituencies becomes scary indeed.
Pakistan may be thousands of miles away from Europe but its collapse would certainly reverberate here as well. Europe must think hard about what can be done to help. The Europeans’ biggest stake in Pakistan is via their involvement in Afghanistan. Troops from 21 European countries there are having a terrible time fighting the Taliban, who draw support from the tribes in Pakistan’s lawless northwestern region. It is becoming clear that Afghanistan cannot be secured unless Pakistan’s tribal areas are brought under some semblance of central control. If Pakistan collapses, that task will become impossible, and the chance for a successful Afghan state may slip away.
NATO commands the Afghanistan operation, and until recently, it ran a busy military-to-military dialogue with Pakistan. That conversation has largely stopped for now, NATO officials say, until Pakistan’s internal situation becomes more stable. But when and if it resumes, European countries involved in NATO’s Afghanistan mission should use the forum to press Pakistan for more co-operation on the fight against the Taliban. They should also explore whether the scope of the debates can be expanded to include Pakistan’s domestic situation.
But beyond this forum Europe’s leverage over Pakistan is limited. The reality is that events in Pakistan have a bigger impact on Europe than the European Union (EU) exerts on Pakistan. Asian countries by and large view the EU as a collection of nation-states rather than a whole. While on trade issues they speak to the EU, on foreign policy national capitals matter far more than the union. London almost certainly has a bigger say in Pakistan than Brussels.
That would be fine in principle except that member-states find it difficult to have a meaningful influence alone. In Pakistan, even the United States tried and failed to broker a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance. Islamabad has become introverted and closed.
The question then becomes how to use the EU’s limited influence, and, whether it is possible to expand it. On the first count, Europe’s main goal should be to ensure that the Pakistani elections next month are fair, free and timely. Europe has offered to send an election monitoring mission to assist with the forthcoming elections on February 18th (moved from January 8th). This includes 11 election experts and fifty long-term observers. Europe should make it clear to Musharraf that he must not delay the elections any longer for his own political gain, as Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (which stands to benefit the most from the sympathy factor) fears. Musharraf’s decreasing credibility in conjunction with rigged elections would snuff out any hope of return to normality in the near to medium term.
Europe should also use its leverage over the US to lean on Washington to insist on fully democratic elections. For too long, Musharraf, who has been a willing aide in Washington’s fight against terrorism, enjoyed America’s nearly total support, despite having previously overthrown a civilian government. That attitude has begun to change lately – the US was behind the push for a Bhutto-Musharraf alliance, and US diplomats have been quietly talking to some of the Islamists opposition parties, too. Europe should encourage Washington to fully end their dependency on Musharraf, and to press for democratic elections.
Beyond these measures there seem precious few options for the EU to act, certainly in the short run. Since the September 11th attacks the EU has consciously tried to strengthen its role in the country. It gave Pakistani goods preferential access to European markets. In 2005 the EU provided tens of millions of euros to help Pakistan deal with the aftermath of a massive earthquake. Yet none of this seems to have raised Europe’s profile much. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy representative is said to be speaking to Musharraf often but to little effect. But for now, Europe’s best hope is to use its limited leverage to press for democracy, and to hope for Musharraf to become more open to outside influence. A visit to Brussels would be a strong signal of interest.
In the long run, the EU could and should use its know-how in institution-building to help Pakistan overcome its ethnic divisions. As things stand, Pakistan’s political parties represent regional and ethnic interests rather than ideas. And while Bhutto, who hailed from the southern Sindh province, has gained nation-wide appeal and always viewed herself as Pakistani first, the fear is that her successors will put Sindhi interests before Pakistan. In that case, even if the elections are free and fair, the late Bhutto’s party victory may exacerbate ethnic tensions and fail to produce a stable government (not unlike in Iraq, where elections manifestly failed to heal the ethnic divide between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds).
The EU member-states have considerable know-how in building modern political parties. Those skills have already helped transform the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU member-states should brainstorm about whether a similar formula could be applied to Pakistan. The strife-ridden country badly needs to transcend the politics of ethnicity. If the EU can help, it would make a major contribution to the stability of Pakistan – and perhaps win for itself a greater role in Pakistan’s domestic politics.
Melissa Ball is an associate at SEI and Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
As if to prove that “when it rains, it pours”, Pakistan took yet another step towards chaos with the assassination on December 27th of Benazir Bhutto, the country’s former prime minister. This comes on the heels of months of protests by the country’s lawyers and judges, a mounting Islamist challenge to Pakistan’s secular nature, and the increasing isolation of Pervez Musharraf’s regime. With Bhutto’s untimely death, the country’s best hope for stability – a power-sharing agreement between Bhutto and Musharraf – is no longer possible. And while Pakistan remains relatively calm for now (it could be worse), a violent regime change or even a civil war no longer seem implausible.
Pakistan matters enormously. It borders the rising powers of India and China as well as two of the world’s worst trouble spots, Afghanistan and Iran. A failed Pakistan is certain to destabilize Afghanistan, and may well derail India’s peaceful development (if the violence in the contested region of Kashmir worsens). Equally importantly for Europe, Pakistan’s northwestern region serves as training and recruiting ground for al-Qaeda terrorists. Pakistan-trained terrorists have already struck in the UK but Germans, too, were found to be training in Pakistan’s terrorist camps, and the Taliban also claims to have French and other nationalities in its ranks. Add to this a sizeable stash of nuclear weapons, and the prospect of Pakistan disintegrating into its ethnic constituencies becomes scary indeed.
Pakistan may be thousands of miles away from Europe but its collapse would certainly reverberate here as well. Europe must think hard about what can be done to help. The Europeans’ biggest stake in Pakistan is via their involvement in Afghanistan. Troops from 21 European countries there are having a terrible time fighting the Taliban, who draw support from the tribes in Pakistan’s lawless northwestern region. It is becoming clear that Afghanistan cannot be secured unless Pakistan’s tribal areas are brought under some semblance of central control. If Pakistan collapses, that task will become impossible, and the chance for a successful Afghan state may slip away.
NATO commands the Afghanistan operation, and until recently, it ran a busy military-to-military dialogue with Pakistan. That conversation has largely stopped for now, NATO officials say, until Pakistan’s internal situation becomes more stable. But when and if it resumes, European countries involved in NATO’s Afghanistan mission should use the forum to press Pakistan for more co-operation on the fight against the Taliban. They should also explore whether the scope of the debates can be expanded to include Pakistan’s domestic situation.
But beyond this forum Europe’s leverage over Pakistan is limited. The reality is that events in Pakistan have a bigger impact on Europe than the European Union (EU) exerts on Pakistan. Asian countries by and large view the EU as a collection of nation-states rather than a whole. While on trade issues they speak to the EU, on foreign policy national capitals matter far more than the union. London almost certainly has a bigger say in Pakistan than Brussels.
That would be fine in principle except that member-states find it difficult to have a meaningful influence alone. In Pakistan, even the United States tried and failed to broker a Musharraf-Bhutto alliance. Islamabad has become introverted and closed.
The question then becomes how to use the EU’s limited influence, and, whether it is possible to expand it. On the first count, Europe’s main goal should be to ensure that the Pakistani elections next month are fair, free and timely. Europe has offered to send an election monitoring mission to assist with the forthcoming elections on February 18th (moved from January 8th). This includes 11 election experts and fifty long-term observers. Europe should make it clear to Musharraf that he must not delay the elections any longer for his own political gain, as Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (which stands to benefit the most from the sympathy factor) fears. Musharraf’s decreasing credibility in conjunction with rigged elections would snuff out any hope of return to normality in the near to medium term.
Europe should also use its leverage over the US to lean on Washington to insist on fully democratic elections. For too long, Musharraf, who has been a willing aide in Washington’s fight against terrorism, enjoyed America’s nearly total support, despite having previously overthrown a civilian government. That attitude has begun to change lately – the US was behind the push for a Bhutto-Musharraf alliance, and US diplomats have been quietly talking to some of the Islamists opposition parties, too. Europe should encourage Washington to fully end their dependency on Musharraf, and to press for democratic elections.
Beyond these measures there seem precious few options for the EU to act, certainly in the short run. Since the September 11th attacks the EU has consciously tried to strengthen its role in the country. It gave Pakistani goods preferential access to European markets. In 2005 the EU provided tens of millions of euros to help Pakistan deal with the aftermath of a massive earthquake. Yet none of this seems to have raised Europe’s profile much. Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy representative is said to be speaking to Musharraf often but to little effect. But for now, Europe’s best hope is to use its limited leverage to press for democracy, and to hope for Musharraf to become more open to outside influence. A visit to Brussels would be a strong signal of interest.
In the long run, the EU could and should use its know-how in institution-building to help Pakistan overcome its ethnic divisions. As things stand, Pakistan’s political parties represent regional and ethnic interests rather than ideas. And while Bhutto, who hailed from the southern Sindh province, has gained nation-wide appeal and always viewed herself as Pakistani first, the fear is that her successors will put Sindhi interests before Pakistan. In that case, even if the elections are free and fair, the late Bhutto’s party victory may exacerbate ethnic tensions and fail to produce a stable government (not unlike in Iraq, where elections manifestly failed to heal the ethnic divide between the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds).
The EU member-states have considerable know-how in building modern political parties. Those skills have already helped transform the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. The EU member-states should brainstorm about whether a similar formula could be applied to Pakistan. The strife-ridden country badly needs to transcend the politics of ethnicity. If the EU can help, it would make a major contribution to the stability of Pakistan – and perhaps win for itself a greater role in Pakistan’s domestic politics.
Melissa Ball is an associate at SEI and Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defence at the Centre for European Reform.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Don't be fooled: Bali was no breakthrough
by Simon Tilford
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali produced as much as it was ever likely to do. There was no breakthrough, contrary to the claims of some that attended the conference. Nobody should read too much into reports that the US administration fears its negotiators gave too much away. This is just news management, an attempt to create the impression that the US moved further than it did. The US gave nothing away. The aim of the US negotiating team in Bali was to prevent any international agreement that might demand the US cut its emissions, despite the fact the country could do this at relatively moderate cost according to its own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This opposition stems partly from the personal intransigence of President Bush, but also reflects a deep-seated reluctance to allow the country’s freedom of action to be constrained by international agreements. It is another big blow to US soft power in the world.
Of course, on current trends the proposed target of a 25-40 percent cut in developed country emissions by 2020 is nonsense. There is no chance whatsoever of such targets being met unless EU governments get very serious, very quickly about curbing emissions. The construction of new coal-fired power stations would not be compatible with meeting such a target for example, so governments in Germany and the UK would have to scrap plans for a new generation of such plants. Germany would also have to overcome its squeamishness about nuclear power. Energy efficiency standards, for everything from cars to buildings would have to be ratcheted-up very aggressively. Crucially, the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) would need very tight emissions caps. Only then will businesses be confident that the price of carbon will rise steadily, providing sufficiently strong incentives to invest in low-carbon technologies.
However, notwithstanding question marks over the realism of the 25-40 per cent target, the US position – that targets are meaningless without policies can be put in place at the outset to met those targets – is hugely cynical. It is impossible to agree policies to reduce emissions until governments know which targets their economies have to meet. Similarly, the US knows as well as everyone else that the commitments to curb emissions it wants to see from developing countries will only happen if the developed countries take the lead. It is simply not plausible for the US to turn to China and India and demand they commit to mandatory cuts before it does. Per capita US emissions are at least 4 times Chinese levels and more than 10 times Indian ones. Research from the EPA calculates that the US could cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050 at a cost of just 3.2 per cent of GDP. To put that in perspective, US GDP will rise by nearly 200 per cent over this period (assuming annual real GDP growth of 2.5 per cent.) For the world’s only superpower to rule out such action almost looks like a calculated snub to the rest of the world and will prove a big blow to its moral authority.
However, it is still early days – the timetable for agreeing a replacement for Kyoto stretches into 2009, and hence beyond President Bush’s time in office. Whoever replaces him will have to be more open-minded about international action to challenge climate change, even if only for questions of political expediency. With only 18 months left in office Bush can afford to dismiss the damage being done to the US’s international standing and influence. The next president will not have such a luxury and, regardless of how seriously he/she takes the threat of climate change, will calculate that the costs of refusing to join the EU in its attempt to orchestrate international action to address climate change will outweigh the perceived costs of signing-up.
The EU can do much to ensure that the costs of US inaction are steep. The best way to put pressure on the next administration is for the EU to persevere and impose big unilateral cuts in its own emissions. This will not impair the competitiveness of the EU or cost it export markets. Indeed, the opposite is much more likely. The US is unwilling to take action, but neither does it want to see the EU building on its lead in energy efficient technologies. In an age of mounting energy scarcity, geo-political tension and ever more environmentally conscious consumers and businesses, aggressive emissions targets by the EU will be positive for Europe’s authority in the world and for its long-term economic prospects. The Chinese and Indians might not be ready to sign up to mandatory caps on their emissions, but they are only too aware of the need to make their development more environmentally sustainable. The EU is well placed to supply the technology. The more successful it is at doing this, the quicker the US will come to its senses.
Simon Tilford is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali produced as much as it was ever likely to do. There was no breakthrough, contrary to the claims of some that attended the conference. Nobody should read too much into reports that the US administration fears its negotiators gave too much away. This is just news management, an attempt to create the impression that the US moved further than it did. The US gave nothing away. The aim of the US negotiating team in Bali was to prevent any international agreement that might demand the US cut its emissions, despite the fact the country could do this at relatively moderate cost according to its own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This opposition stems partly from the personal intransigence of President Bush, but also reflects a deep-seated reluctance to allow the country’s freedom of action to be constrained by international agreements. It is another big blow to US soft power in the world.
Of course, on current trends the proposed target of a 25-40 percent cut in developed country emissions by 2020 is nonsense. There is no chance whatsoever of such targets being met unless EU governments get very serious, very quickly about curbing emissions. The construction of new coal-fired power stations would not be compatible with meeting such a target for example, so governments in Germany and the UK would have to scrap plans for a new generation of such plants. Germany would also have to overcome its squeamishness about nuclear power. Energy efficiency standards, for everything from cars to buildings would have to be ratcheted-up very aggressively. Crucially, the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) would need very tight emissions caps. Only then will businesses be confident that the price of carbon will rise steadily, providing sufficiently strong incentives to invest in low-carbon technologies.
However, notwithstanding question marks over the realism of the 25-40 per cent target, the US position – that targets are meaningless without policies can be put in place at the outset to met those targets – is hugely cynical. It is impossible to agree policies to reduce emissions until governments know which targets their economies have to meet. Similarly, the US knows as well as everyone else that the commitments to curb emissions it wants to see from developing countries will only happen if the developed countries take the lead. It is simply not plausible for the US to turn to China and India and demand they commit to mandatory cuts before it does. Per capita US emissions are at least 4 times Chinese levels and more than 10 times Indian ones. Research from the EPA calculates that the US could cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 60 per cent by 2050 at a cost of just 3.2 per cent of GDP. To put that in perspective, US GDP will rise by nearly 200 per cent over this period (assuming annual real GDP growth of 2.5 per cent.) For the world’s only superpower to rule out such action almost looks like a calculated snub to the rest of the world and will prove a big blow to its moral authority.
However, it is still early days – the timetable for agreeing a replacement for Kyoto stretches into 2009, and hence beyond President Bush’s time in office. Whoever replaces him will have to be more open-minded about international action to challenge climate change, even if only for questions of political expediency. With only 18 months left in office Bush can afford to dismiss the damage being done to the US’s international standing and influence. The next president will not have such a luxury and, regardless of how seriously he/she takes the threat of climate change, will calculate that the costs of refusing to join the EU in its attempt to orchestrate international action to address climate change will outweigh the perceived costs of signing-up.
The EU can do much to ensure that the costs of US inaction are steep. The best way to put pressure on the next administration is for the EU to persevere and impose big unilateral cuts in its own emissions. This will not impair the competitiveness of the EU or cost it export markets. Indeed, the opposite is much more likely. The US is unwilling to take action, but neither does it want to see the EU building on its lead in energy efficient technologies. In an age of mounting energy scarcity, geo-political tension and ever more environmentally conscious consumers and businesses, aggressive emissions targets by the EU will be positive for Europe’s authority in the world and for its long-term economic prospects. The Chinese and Indians might not be ready to sign up to mandatory caps on their emissions, but they are only too aware of the need to make their development more environmentally sustainable. The EU is well placed to supply the technology. The more successful it is at doing this, the quicker the US will come to its senses.
Simon Tilford is chief economist at the Centre for European Reform.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Should Europol and Eurojust merge?
by Hugo Brady
Governments increasingly use Europol, the EU’s police office, and Eurojust - its prosecution unit - to investigate criminals operating across borders and bring them to justice. At Europol, national police and crime analysts gather intelligence on crimes ranging from drug trafficking to counterfeiting and terrorism. Eurojust mostly helps prosecute cases across national borders within the EU. All 27 member-states send police and prosecutors to the offices of Europol and Eurojust, each located separately in The Hague.
In 2008, new EU legislation is planned to give Europol wider investigative powers, cut bureaucracy, and give the body more freedom to gather intelligence and information like DNA data. It will also report yearly to the European Parliament and brief national parliaments, making it somewhat more accountable. But the new-look Europol will not be able to arrest people or start investigations independently of the member-states.
Plans are afoot to make Eurojust work better, too. Governments are pondering how best to guarantee the national prosecutors seconded to it have proper powers from their home authorities to be able to work effectively at international level. All Eurojust prosecutors should be invested with a basic level of powers, including powers to issue formal requests for evidence and authorise surveillance, phone taps and undercover operations. This is not currently the case and hampers Eurojust’s considerable potential: the unit’s caseload inceases by an average of 40 per cent yearly.
Such reforms are useful. But they fail to address a basic problem of cross-border crime fighting. Prosecutors and police across the EU have differing roles and powers and this is often an obstacle to effective co-operation between counterparts. In some countries police investigate but also have quasi-judicial powers; in others, prosecutors do police work as well as bring cases to trial. Take surveillance. Police at Europol can be unable to track a drug delivery properly from the Balkans to the Nordics because in some countries only the prosecutor can organise a cross-border surveillance operation. As a result, police can begin to doubt that cross-border co-operation is worth the hassle and uncertainty.
A radical way to address such problems would be to merge Europol and Eurojust into a single European law enforcement co-ordination body. A single body could ensure more coherent co-operation across the EU, whatever the division of labour between national police and prosecutors. It would also mean simpler procedures for dealing with intelligence, less duplication of efforts against the same criminals and better follow-through from investigation to prosecution in cross-border cases. Most member-states would be dead against such a move, however. Britain and Ireland do not want prosecutors to oversee the work of their police, even if only at European level. Others – like Spain and France – fear a merger that could mean the reverse: police investigating cases without the say-so of prosecutors.
But these difficult political issues could be circumvented and better co-ordination ensured by a more modest move. Europol and Eurojust should be re-located to the same building and some of their resources and facilities amalgamated. Each member-state would have a single national office made up of both police and prosecutors without any change to national hierarchies. Eurojust and Europol could simplfy data protection requirements by drawing up a single data protection regime for sharing information across borders to replace the current separate procedures. And intelligence-sharing could be made more secure and cost-effective with a common IT system.
How well Europol and Eurojust co-operate matters. In November 2007, a joint Europol-Eurojust operation (Operation Koala) destroyed a child pornography network that had disguised itself as a respectable international child modeling agency. Based on high quality information, Europol helped national police to identify customers buying illegal and abusive videos of children filmed in Belgium and the Netherlands. Eurojust helped co-ordinate judges and police from 28 countries that had with some connection with the network. As a result, multiple arrests were made – carried out simultaneously in several countries – and thousands of computers, videos and photographs seized as evidence.
However cases like Koala, where the two bodies achieve a high-level of co-operation, are the exception rather than the rule. According to one prosecutor, police and prosecutors working together on cross-border investigations “is the kind of thing that should be our bread and butter but unfortunately we’re not there yet.” Co-location might seem too basic a solution to boost co-operation. But police attest that Europol’s main value is the simple reality of having colleagues from 27 European countries working together on the same corridor in The Hague, an unparalleled resource in day-to-day police co-operation. The addition of prosecutors to this mix would produce a powerful synergy in law enforcement co-operation.
Hugo Brady is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
Governments increasingly use Europol, the EU’s police office, and Eurojust - its prosecution unit - to investigate criminals operating across borders and bring them to justice. At Europol, national police and crime analysts gather intelligence on crimes ranging from drug trafficking to counterfeiting and terrorism. Eurojust mostly helps prosecute cases across national borders within the EU. All 27 member-states send police and prosecutors to the offices of Europol and Eurojust, each located separately in The Hague.
In 2008, new EU legislation is planned to give Europol wider investigative powers, cut bureaucracy, and give the body more freedom to gather intelligence and information like DNA data. It will also report yearly to the European Parliament and brief national parliaments, making it somewhat more accountable. But the new-look Europol will not be able to arrest people or start investigations independently of the member-states.
Plans are afoot to make Eurojust work better, too. Governments are pondering how best to guarantee the national prosecutors seconded to it have proper powers from their home authorities to be able to work effectively at international level. All Eurojust prosecutors should be invested with a basic level of powers, including powers to issue formal requests for evidence and authorise surveillance, phone taps and undercover operations. This is not currently the case and hampers Eurojust’s considerable potential: the unit’s caseload inceases by an average of 40 per cent yearly.
Such reforms are useful. But they fail to address a basic problem of cross-border crime fighting. Prosecutors and police across the EU have differing roles and powers and this is often an obstacle to effective co-operation between counterparts. In some countries police investigate but also have quasi-judicial powers; in others, prosecutors do police work as well as bring cases to trial. Take surveillance. Police at Europol can be unable to track a drug delivery properly from the Balkans to the Nordics because in some countries only the prosecutor can organise a cross-border surveillance operation. As a result, police can begin to doubt that cross-border co-operation is worth the hassle and uncertainty.
A radical way to address such problems would be to merge Europol and Eurojust into a single European law enforcement co-ordination body. A single body could ensure more coherent co-operation across the EU, whatever the division of labour between national police and prosecutors. It would also mean simpler procedures for dealing with intelligence, less duplication of efforts against the same criminals and better follow-through from investigation to prosecution in cross-border cases. Most member-states would be dead against such a move, however. Britain and Ireland do not want prosecutors to oversee the work of their police, even if only at European level. Others – like Spain and France – fear a merger that could mean the reverse: police investigating cases without the say-so of prosecutors.
But these difficult political issues could be circumvented and better co-ordination ensured by a more modest move. Europol and Eurojust should be re-located to the same building and some of their resources and facilities amalgamated. Each member-state would have a single national office made up of both police and prosecutors without any change to national hierarchies. Eurojust and Europol could simplfy data protection requirements by drawing up a single data protection regime for sharing information across borders to replace the current separate procedures. And intelligence-sharing could be made more secure and cost-effective with a common IT system.
How well Europol and Eurojust co-operate matters. In November 2007, a joint Europol-Eurojust operation (Operation Koala) destroyed a child pornography network that had disguised itself as a respectable international child modeling agency. Based on high quality information, Europol helped national police to identify customers buying illegal and abusive videos of children filmed in Belgium and the Netherlands. Eurojust helped co-ordinate judges and police from 28 countries that had with some connection with the network. As a result, multiple arrests were made – carried out simultaneously in several countries – and thousands of computers, videos and photographs seized as evidence.
However cases like Koala, where the two bodies achieve a high-level of co-operation, are the exception rather than the rule. According to one prosecutor, police and prosecutors working together on cross-border investigations “is the kind of thing that should be our bread and butter but unfortunately we’re not there yet.” Co-location might seem too basic a solution to boost co-operation. But police attest that Europol’s main value is the simple reality of having colleagues from 27 European countries working together on the same corridor in The Hague, an unparalleled resource in day-to-day police co-operation. The addition of prosecutors to this mix would produce a powerful synergy in law enforcement co-operation.
Hugo Brady is a research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.
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