At least, history has documented that Russia, after the sudden collapse of the Soviet era in 1991, has had dreamy aspirations to become an European country. Throughout those several years, it has turned it focus to Europe, attempted to climb as full-fledged member of European organizations and associations.
Several reports have shown that politicians, business tycoons and ordinary Russians frequently shuttled between European cities. The Russian officialdom consistently paved the way for corporate working relationship and created the environment for investors. Notwithstanding, Russian elites acquired expensive assets and luxurious properties in Europe. Even so many foreign words and phrase, such as “nashiye europiskiyie colleagie” have entered into the Russian language.
With the approved “special military operation” mounted on neighbouring Ukraine, the introduction of series of stringent sanctions and restrictions by the United States and European Union, and Russia’s own restrictive rules and regulations necesitated the speedy exit of most Western and European businesses form the territory of the Russian Federation.
In the context of emerging multi-polar world order, it is increasing becoming necessary for politicians, experts and researchers to establish what really went wrong with the EU-Russia relations and what will be the future of Europe and Russia. What about the new configuration of Industrialized North and the Global South? Is Russia considered part of the Global South or the Industrialized North? Is it justified if Russia severs completely relations with Europe?
In March 2021, Professor Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, Member of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, wrote an excellent opinion article posted to the website of the Russian International Affairs Council. He argued the fact that the EU-Russia relationship had been building for a long time, through several political-economic stages since the collapse of the Soviet era.
Historically, some of the concrete foundations of Russia’s relations with the EU were laid in the first half of the 1990s with the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which was signed in 1994 and ratified in 1997. Conceptually, it was based on a postulate then taken for granted. The end of the Cold War had created opportunities to consolidate the Old World – liberally understood to stretch as far east and south as possible – on the basis of the norms and rules developed and refined in Western Europe during the region’s integration from the 1950s to the 1990s.
Many newly independent states were admitted to the EU, which grew from twelve member states in 1992 to twenty-eight in 2015. The rest were invited to be part of a “wider Europe” with no third option on offer. The prospect of Russia joining was never in the cards. However, it was believed that its post-communist transformation would follow the European model and make the country more or less compatible with the EU, with which Russia would form an ill-defined community.
According to Professor Lukyanov, Moscow shared that perspective as late as the late 2000s. Even afterward, it attempted to reconcile that expectation with its increasingly apparent divergence with the EU, hence the intense high-level political dialogue in which the two sides engaged until 2014: a privilege the EU extended to Russia alone. Moscow used to insist on holding two summits a year, even as Brussels held just one a year with its most important partners.
The premise of all this was that European integration had no competition as a means of organizing Europe’s political space. Its successful application in Western Europe aside, it dovetailed ideally with the notion, so triumphant after the Cold War, of the liberal world order. Indeed, Europe’s lack of traditional hard power and reliance on other instruments, chief among them normative expansion and conditionality – i.e., requiring partners to change their practices in exchange for access to privilege – was nothing if not consistent with liberal principles.
The evolution of EU-Russia relations from the hopeful dawn of the early 1990s to the despairing sunset of the 2010s is one of the most revealing episodes in the history of the post-Cold War global transformation. Ever since the idea of a formalized community consisting of Europe and Russia lost its relevance (no practical steps have been taken to that end since the late 2000s), the relationship’s original principles have been meaningless.
The attempt at institutional partnership represented the culmination of about 200 years of efforts by a school of thought in Russia to Westernize the country. For the first time, the Westernizers saw an opportunity to qualitatively change the nature of Russia’s relations with the West.
That opportunity turned out to be a treacherous one. Russia’s Westernizers never intended for their country to formally submit to Europe’s rules and regulations, even as they pushed for modernization, active cooperation with Europe, and emulation of its ways. Yet that was precisely what Europe asked of Russia after 1992.
Professor Lukyanov further argued that Europe’s experiment with its transformation into a politically consolidated subject, one projecting its normative framework outward, presupposed hierarchical relations between the EU and its direct neighbors. From the start, Russia was expected to not only cooperate with the EU, but also develop joint institutions. In its relations with Russia, Europe countenanced no retreat from its insistence on rule transfer.
Had Moscow resolved to become part of this “wider Europe,” the concessions it was expected to make would have been justified. But Russia’s Westernizers failed to persuade the country of the merits of qualitatively limiting its own sovereignty for the sake of following the European model.
Today, the two sides find themselves deeply irritated with each other, and their political relations effectively nonexistent. Indeed, the furor that followed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s threat to sever Russia’s ties with the EU wasn’t really justified, given that there have been none to speak of since 2014. There remain only Russia’s relations with individual EU member states.
Arguably, the cause of all the sanctions and political tensions is Russia’s domestic politics. As things stand, Europe’s objections primarily relate to the violation of democratic norms, rights, and freedoms inside Russia, which the EU maintains it cannot tolerate. Brussels’s stance is easy to understand in terms of the logic of a “wider Europe.” But that logic has long had no place in Russia’s relations with the EU. The reality is that their political dialogue is a relic of a bygone era. Everything has changed, from Russia and Europe to the West and the wider world. The liberal world order is no more.
According to Professor Lukyanov, it increasingly believes that the EU is undergoing irreversible changes as a result of which it will never again have the clout it had fifteen to twenty years ago. Back then, it seemed that the EU would become a global player on par with the United States and China and come to unilaterally shape not only Europe but also much of Eurasia. It is now clear that such a goal is unfeasible: not just in Eurasia but in Europe too, where it has become possible to envision alternative means of organizing the continent’s political-economic space.
When it comes to EU-Russia relations, then, the old framework is not just obsolete, it may even prove harmful, as it risks provoking new clashes. Once the EU and Russia are ready, as they eventually will be, a new framework awaits: one promising a new boost to EU-Russia cooperation on the understanding that a formal community consisting of the two is not an outcome worth pursuing.
