Summary: "The European approach to democracy promotion in post-communist countries" - Speech by EU Commissioner Ferrero-Waldner (19 January 2006: Vienna)
Speech by Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, "The European approach to democracy promotion in post-communist countries", International Conference, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna
Dear Professor Michalski,
Mr Chairman, Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for this invitation to speak to you today. I see that the issues which have arisen since I last spoke to you a year ago are well reflected in your programme - democratisation and energy markets; democratisation and Islam. The challenges facing democracy seem to become more complex as time goes by.
Yet, thanks to the dedication of international policy-makers and many non-governmental enthusiasts, the tide of democracy keeps moving in the right direction, despite all the ups and downs witnessed in 2006. We should not underestimate the force for change encompassed by people power.
Last year I gave you an overview of the EU's approach to democracy promotion. I mentioned the 3 key principles of the EU's approach:
1) We recognise that the practice of democracy can look very different from one country to the next, and political institutions must match local conditions. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to democracy promotion.
2) We know we need long term commitment and patience. Democracy is not instant coffee - it takes time to build new institutions and widespread trust in them.
3) And perhaps most importantly, we understand that democracy can never be imposed from outside: genuine democratic transition must always come from within. And this takes time and can be accompanied by temporary setbacks.
Today I would like to talk about three very recent developments in the EU's democracy promotion armoury which reflect those principles and which will set the scene for EU policy making in the next few years.
• An enhanced European Neighbourhood Policy
• A strategy for Central Asia; and
• A new financial instrument at our disposal.
1) First, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). ENP is the EU's policy for promoting prosperity, democracy and security in its immediate neighbourhood, to the East and to the South. ENP was set up to encourage the countries in this region to undertake far-reaching reform by offering them the incentive of a closer relationship with the EU. This could mean integration into the EU's single market, and greater financial benefits.
ENP operates through Action Plans, tailor-made for each country, which detail the incentives on offer from the EU and the policy areas where our partners intend to make progress: rule of law, democracy, human rights, as well as market-oriented economic reforms.
Although the first two years of implementing this policy showed some good results, it became clear to me that the policy wasn't living up to its full potential. Why? Because most of the benefits we were offering were too long-term to push our partners to make the short term political sacrifices needed for real reforms. We realised that benefits were needed of the kind which make a difference to people directly and immediately, in exchange for faster and better reforms.
So in December the Commission launched an enhanced European Neighbourhood Policy. It has its own financing instrument with an overall budget of €12 billion for 2007-13, including €700 mill. "seed money" for a new Neighbourhood Investment Fund providing grant support for infrastructure and other big-scale operations.
The enhanced ENP concentrates on key areas of mutual interest. We want to have closer people to people contacts, for example through a new scholarship programme for young people and improved visa policies. We want to give ENP a regional dimension also to the East - something comparable to the Barcelona process for the South. This will prepare us for building a "neighbourhood economic community" between the EU and our partner countries, East and South.
Perhaps of most interest in the context of this conference is how ENP supports political reform. We advise on our experience of democratisation and governance reforms, and we help build effective administrations and root out corruption and fraud.
The enhanced ENP instrument includes a new Governance Facility worth €300 million, which will reward those countries who make most progress in governance reform. In 2006, Morocco and Jordan already benefited from a similar reward - we hope that this year some of our Eastern neighbours will also be eligible.
A very successful example in the ENP's Eastern part is Ukraine. The EU-Ukraine Action Plan, adopted in early 2005 in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution, has proven to be a fundamental tool in promoting and consolidating political and democratic reform and respect for human rights in the country. The EU had indicated at the time that, provided the main political elements of the Action Plan were fulfilled, we would be ready to further strengthen our relations with Ukraine through a
"new enhanced agreement". Following the democratic parliamentary elections of 2006, we are now on our way to launch negotiations this spring for a new, ambitious and comprehensive agreement - which I am confident will in turn contribute to further consolidating the democratic transition process within Ukraine.
On the other pole of democratic progress in this region stands Belarus, which continues to deserve our full attention. Last year's presidential elections were deemed as flawed by the OSCE and by the EU. The local elections that took place on Sunday again showed a complete disregard for pluralistic democracy. The opposition was given no chance to compete fairly with State supported candidates and the voters were given no genuine choice. And opposition proponents, like Mr Milinkevich,
winner of the European Parliament's Sacharov prize, are still often detained.
The people of Belarus are still deprived of independent information and of a democratic alternative. We therefore have to speak to them directly. For this reason, we made public our offer to the people of Belarus. Our message is that we are available for a closer relationship with Belarus within the framework of the ENP, and we are ready to make our assistance fully available to the Belarusian people, as soon as Belarus demonstrates its willingness to become a true democracy and to honour its
commitments on respect for the rule of law and human rights.
Meanwhile, the EC is committed to continue supporting civil society and democratisation efforts. We will also seek to further develop ties between the people of Belarus and of the EU.
The other ENP countries in the East, Moldova and the three Caucasus republics are of course more democratic than Belarus. Unfortunately, there are limits to what can be achieved through political reforms there, too, as long as unresolved conflicts destabilize these countries. We need to address the challenge of the frozen conflicts in Moldova and the Southern Caucasus. In addition to the successful EU border management mission in Moldova, we therefore propose a greater EU presence in
regional conflict resolution mechanisms. This could also mean participation in peace keeping efforts, for instance. More security and democratic reforms are interlinked and mutually beneficial.
2) This brings me to my second issue of the day, Central Asia. Some of you may remember that last year I pointed out that we urgently needed to define an approach to the countries of Central Asia. This region, which I know well since my time as Chairperson of the OSCE, has great political challenges for us, but also considerable economic and strategic potential. As you are well aware, it contains vast energy resources which are of increasing importance to a mineral-starved Europe. Thanks
to enlargement and ENP, it is coming closer to our borders.
This part of the post-communist space still hosts a significant democracy deficit, and the values we hold dear are often violated. But we also see encouraging trends, like in Kyrgyzstan, where the people succeeded in their fight for democracy. And I also note Kazakhstan's efforts to assume the OSCE's chairmanship, which still requires progress on a number of democracy and human rights issues.
Because the EU needs to take a coherent and consistent approach to the region, we are in the process of developing a strategy for Central Asia - the first of its kind. In December the Commission and the Council Secretariat elaborated a policy paper setting out possible elements for such a strategy. Work continues now with the German Presidency.
The first and most important strand in the paper is the need to promote good governance, human rights and democratisation. Without these, security and modernisation will simply not be possible.
This is not an easy region in which to work, but it is one where we absolutely have to find solutions - or we remain stuck with the difficult dilemmas we face. The key word for me is 'engagement'. Without engagement we can not hope to influence the human rights and democracy situation, even in the most difficult countries. While other international actors like Russia and China are engaging in the region without paying much attention to these issues, for us it goes hand in hand and forms
part of our overall agenda.
Our focus therefore needs to be on good governance, institutional and political reforms, and the rule of law. We should introduce structured human rights dialogues, and continue support for civil society and NGOs. We have to prioritise education and training, and support local democratisation efforts. Over the next six months, under German Presidency we will have a serious discussion about the nature and future of our policy in the region.
It is clear that we must tailor our policies to the different situations in each country. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan it is easier to work with civil society and fund democracy promotion projects. But in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan the situation is more difficult.
Yet in the long run nothing will be possible in Central Asia without the consolidation of stable, just and open societies. The political-, economic-, and social-governance deficits in combination with the poverty situation provides fertile ground for extremism.
***
Before turning to the third point of my speech, the new financial Instrument, I have to touch upon one country which is neither part of our Neighbourhood Policy nor of our Central Asia strategy. But of course, no discussion of democracy promotion in post-Communist countries could be complete without some words about Russia.
It is indeed no secret that we have concerns about the state of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Russia. The situation in Chechnya continues to worry us. I am therefore glad that after difficult discussions with the Russians we were able to agree on a special cooperation project for Chechnya, which hopefully will start in the near future.
The killing of Anna Politkovskaya - the 21st journalist killed in Russia since 2000 according to some NGOs - illustrates the pressures under which independent media at times have to operate. We will also continue to watch how the new laws on NGOs and anti-extremist activities affect the situation of NGOs and civil society as a whole.
We regularly take these matters up in our political dialogue with Russia and the twice-yearly human rights consultations. In addition, the stringent human rights commitments undertaken in the Council of Europe - which Russia has been chairing until recently - will be an important part of the common values we wish to see reflected in the new EU-Russia agreement, which we will start negotiating soon.
***
3) With this, let me turn to the third and final development I'd like to mention, our new European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR). Since the beginning of this year, the EU has this new legal instrument for our financing of democracy promotion and human rights activities, worth more than €130 million a year. Let me stress that this money comes in addition and complementary to the much vaster amounts available in our instruments for different geographical regions
- with which we also pursue the improvement of good governance, democracy and the rule of law among other objectives.
But the EIDHR is more specifically tailored to the cause of human rights and democracy, and can be used more flexibly to promote them. Also compared to its predecessor, the new EIDHR offers much more flexibility in the sorts of projects we can fund and the way we can respond to new situations. We will be able to act more quickly than in the past, and work with a broader array of actors.
We will also be able to act entirely independently of national governments in the partner countries, which was not always the case in the past. This will give us more freedom to work with those who are best placed to have an impact on the ground.
And we are now freer to work with a wider range of actors, including parliaments and political foundations, with whom we were prohibited from working in the past.
***
So as you can see, 2007 begins with the EU in an even stronger position to consolidate its role as a leading promoter of democracy around the world.
We intend to work towards greater cooperation with organisations such as the UN, the Council of Europe and the OSCE, which do such valuable work in this field, including in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I hope this gives you a taste of the way EU democracy promotion activities have developed over the last year, and the direction we might take in the future.
Before closing though I'd like to pay tribute to the many democracy defenders, in this room and beyond, who are fighting on a daily basis for democratic freedom. It may at times seem as daunting a challenge as that of Sisyphus, but your individual contributions in this region and beyond are certainly helping to eventually fix the stone of democracy on top of the hill in all those countries.
Looking forward to a discussion I will end here - as Clement Attlee famously put it, "Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking"!
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