EU support for civil society in the Eastern Neighbourhood

Speaker: Kristi Raik, Research Fellow, Finnish Institute for Foreign Affairs
 
Discussants: Edward McMillan Scott, MEP, Vice-Chairman, European Parliament;
                    Hilde Hardemann, Head of Unit for Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine, DG Relex, European Commission
 
Closing Remarks: Andre Wilkens, Director, Open Society Institute, Brussels
 
Chair: Michael Emerson, Senior Research Fellow, Head of the Neighbourhood Policy Unit, CEPS
 
Date: Tuesday 28 March 2006

On 28 March, CEPS hosted the CEPS – Open Society Seminar entitled “EU support for civil society in the Eastern Neighbourhood “.
 
Kristi Raik from the Finnish Institute for Foreign Affairs opened the seminar with a presentation of her report entitled “Promoting Democracy through Civil Society: How to Step up the EU’s Policy towards the Eastern Neighbourhood”, which had been supported by the Open Society Institute as well as CEPS. She thanked both organizations for a very good cooperation.
 
As Kristi Raik stated, civil society in the Eastern Neighbourhood is very important to the EU, at least in rhetoric. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) had been created as a result of the previous Eastern enlargement and aims at both strengthening the EU’s role as an international actor as well as meeting the expectations in the neighborhood countries with regard to the promotion of democracy and welfare. The Eastern Neighbourhood comprises the Western CIS, i.e. Ukraine and Moldova as well as the Southern Caucasus. Working together with civil society has been foreseen in the ENP strategy, among others via youth work or cross-border cooperation. In the Ukraine Action Plan, cooperation with civil society has been explicitly stated. This marks a broader shift of paradigm in democracy promotion since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Civil Societies have proven to be the key actors of democratization in Eastern Europe and were responsible for the democratic transitions in Georgia and the Ukraine. They remain increasingly important, especially for non-democracies such as Belarus. After the elections in Belarus, it became clear that the number of people present at the demonstrations is too small for a revolution such as in Ukraine. They did show, however, that it gets more and more costly for Lukashenko to maintain his regime.
 
In the course of her presentation, Kristi Raik demonstrated with figures on assistance of major donors to the Eastern Neighbourhood what the EU has done in practice. According to her, this table showed that there is a gap between rhetoric and practice. The figures of support are too small, but nevertheless increasing. As for Ukraine, the US has granted not only a larger amount in total, but also a larger proportion of its assistance went to civil society. In the case of Belarus, the EU is the largest donor, but the US and Sweden have given four times more aid to NGOs there than the EU. As for Moldova, the US is the biggest donor, but here the EU does proportionally well in terms of civil society assistance.
 
While raising the question of why the EU has not done more, Kristi Raik identified five relevant problems:

1. weakness of strategy
2. lack of political will
3. overall strict bureaucratic rules
4. insufficient human and financial resources
5. inter-institutional tensions

As for 1. Kristi Raik criticized the EU’s strategy for seeming scattered and ad hoc. The perceived lack of political will (2.) stems from the fact that the EU issued long lists of priorities, but that there was no focus on certain priorities and on the means to pursue them. The EU was not very clear in its strategies because it is internally divided by the (mostly Eastern) member states that are very eager to support the Eastern neighbourhood and the old (esp. bigger) member states that are more hesitant due to the burden of the recent enlargement, the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and further internal problems. Additionally, these states are cautious in order not to irritate Russia. With the bureaucratic rules (3.), particularly financial regulations in the framework of the Commission’s support for NGOs are meant, which make the procedures rather slow and costly. The financial control mechanisms for them seem stricter than normal. These rules are especially difficult to cope with for small NGOs small projects and for those in authoritarian regimes. There is, however, ongoing discussion on improving the financial regulations. The fourth problem is the simple fact that the Commission does not have sufficient resources for allocating the assistance for civil society and is in need of external assistance. One change that has already been done was shifting the responsibility of aid allocation to the Commission’s delegations in these countries. This was a positive development, but also posed a considerable new burden upon them, so Kristi Raik proposes a search for alternative channels. As for the inter-institutional tensions (5.), the Commission has been criticized by the European Parliament for its bureaucracy in this field. Furthermore, there are member states that oppose increasing the supranational power of the Commission.
 
Kristi Raik’s advice to the EU on how to do more and better included three proposals:

1. a European democracy foundation
2. increased cooperation with European NGOs
3. cooperation with civil society foundations in recipient countries

The first proposal refers to American models or the German “Stiftungen” that are publicly founded but nevertheless more flexible than governmental agents. The second proposal depends on the future of financial regulations as it is currently difficult to delegate assistance to European NGOs. The third approach has been successfully used by the EU in candidate countries, such as working together with foundations as implementing agencies in the Czech republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, etc. Local foundations have also proven to have lower management costs. However, as Kristi Raik emphasized, none of these measures should compete with or replace the work of the Commission. The Commission’s task should remain the assistance of reform-minded countries. In concluding her presentation, Kristi Raik underlined the importance of civil society with regard to the role of the EU as a major regional power. Its specific normative power stresses the importance of democracy and civil society and the EU’s support is therefore a matter of credibility.
 
Edward McMillan Scott, MEP and Vice President of the European Parliament has been extremely active in the field of democracy and human rights promotion since the fall of the Berlin Wall, such as establishing the European Charity and Human Rights foundation. In 1997, which had been the peak of democratisation activities, there were 2000 projects running according to Edward McMillan Scott. While operations were fairly flexible at that time, after 1999 it was decided to make financial regulations more strict for external agencies, which is why McMillan Scott is a critic of the current structure.
 
He was among those who formed the Democracy Caucus in the European Parliament. The Caucus invited the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (IMD) and democratization expert Richard Young to prepare a report on how to promote democracy coupled with human rights. According to McMillan Scott, the connection with human rights is the crucial difference of the European version in comparison with the American version of democracy promotion mentioned in the National Security Paper. McMillan Scott is of the view that the EU should be more active and ambitious, esp. in its neighbourhood since a secure Europe depends on a secure neighbourhood.
 
Hilde Hardemann, Head of Unit for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, explained that the ENP was formed in the framework of the recent enlargement at the Copenhagen Summit 2002 in order to show that that enlargement was not aiming at a new division of Europe. It is however, not designed as another enlargement, which has nothing to do with these third countries, but rather with the EU’s internal constraints. But just like enlargement, the ENP is about sharing stability and prosperity and therefore works via similar mechanisms. The ENP operates with action plans, of which the first chapter is dedicated to democracy, rule of law and minority rights. Since all the member states and the Commission have a say in formulating this Action plan, there is a wide range of measures and policies mentioned. There are, however, defined priorities, fourteen in the case of the Ukraine, out of which the number one priority is the conduct of free and fair elections. For this priority it was not money, but political will needed and the conduct of last Sunday’s elections showed a major improvement in contrast to the previous ones. One difference of the ENP in contrast to enlargement was that vis-à-vis the CEEC candidates a policy-driven approach was followed whereas under the ENP it is a demand-driven approach.
 
The ENPI as a new instrument for the support of democratic development comprises three pillars, out of which the first pillar is dedicated to democracy promotion and human rights. Democracy promotion as a key element involves a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The Commission is increasingly trying to ensure that both approaches are pursued on the same subjects. Hardeman admits that it is true that the Commission currently involves the civil society only on the spot and does not yet have the capacity to do this systematically. DG External looks for appropriate instruments for bottom-up measures.
 
Hardemann called Belarus a special case of the Neighbourhood Policy as there is no Action Plan. As under the TACIS program, the agreement of the government for EU projects is needed, environmental projects or cross-border cooperation are possible, however no action that is seen as subversive by the government. Despite of this constraint, the Commission has tried to support projects by alternative instruments such as the European initiative for democratization and human rights and decentralized cooperation. However, working in Belarus is extremely difficult as people in domestic NGOs are often threatened with jail and the only other option is working together with NGOs abroad.
 
Michael Emerson, senior research fellow of CEPS, has observed the scene of Eastern European civil society from 1991 onwards and feels like now there is a good opportunity to “rebounce” TACIS resources in favour of domestic NGOs of think tanks in these countries. Many classic TACIS projects involved expensive European consultants whereas on a smaller scale, these sums of money could have a huge leverage in domestic institutions. He underlined that this is not an argument for new instruments, but simply “rebouncing old money”.
 
In his concluding remarks, Andre Wilkens, Director of the Open Society Institute acknowledged Kristi Raik’s three proposals for the EU. For the Commission, the top-down approach seemed easier than the bottom-up approach, but there must be a way to “move from wholesale to retail”. Wilkens recalled the importance of the EU’s policy being consistent and mentioned the trade agreement proposed by the European Parliament vis-à-vis Turkmenistan, being another dictatorship like Belarus. Finally, he noted the general agreement that we can work better by making rules more flexible for civil society and that at the end of the day, democracy is best if it is home-grown.