- Following the EU-Russia summit in Yekaterinburg was there any progress in visa talks?
- The summit itself recorded progress achieved so far on two tracks. One track is the implementation of the so-called “Common Steps” towards a visa-waiver agreement. We’re now at the stage when the two sides exchange expert missions on each of the four blocks of that document.
I believe we can finalise this work well before the end of the year and subsequently the EU will need to take a political decision to actually launch negotiations and provide the commission with a proper mandate. We hope that it takes place without delay opening the prospect of completing negotiations and signing the agreement next year.
There will be three benchmarks on the EU side which will require a show of political will. First, to take a decision to launch negotiations; second, to give the green light for signature of that document; and the ultimate one will be ratification. I’m pretty confident on the amount of political will on the Russian side, and I hope the EU will be able to reciprocate.
The second track is further visa facilitation. We have a good working agreement dating back to 2006. The idea is to make a further step, extending the scope of visa-free and visa-facilitated regimes for certain groups and categories of travels, and we are still working on it.
- A key issue in EU-Russia in Yekaterinburg negotiations was Syria, which is also discussed during the G8 summit today (17 June), and there are a lot of disagreements. In talks between British Prime Minister David Cameron and Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday and it seemed there was no common ground...
- Well, I wouldn’t see it that way. I think there is a lot of common ground between Russia, EU countries and the United States. We all want to see a political solution; we all want to see Syria as a peaceful country and certainly remaining as a single country. That’s the strategic goal we all share. How to get there? There we have different views. The Russian-American initiative dating back to 7 May on convening a further international conference nicknamed “Geneva 2”. Things proved to be quite complicated. There is an ongoing effort to bring the necessary people to the table of that conference. One problem is who will represent the Syrian opposition. On the government side the situation is quite clear, they have accepted and nominated a delegation headed by the foreign minister. But on the opposition side, we are still trying to figure out who will be representative enough and able to deliver, and also how to prevent people directly linked to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations from grasping a seat at this conference. The US diplomacy is continuing its effort with the opposition. On our side, we have already managed to secure a positive response from the government in Damascus. We also have contacts in the opposition, including internal opposition - we all know the opposition forces in Syria are a very mixed combination of various groupings, some from within Syria, others from nobody knows where. In any case, we are still hopeful that this conference will materialise.
The second aspect of the participation problem is to bring the neighbours of Syria – well, with the obvious exception of Israel, I believe. But those who are acting as important factors in the Syrian crisis, namely Iran and Saudi Arabia should also participate. This is a view that unfortunately is not shared by everyone.
- Do you think that this is realistic, that they will let Iran and Saudi Arabia participate?
- Well, frankly I fail to see any logical reason in preventing them from coming. Whether they will want to come or not is a different issue. But I believe they should be invited.
- Do you think this talk about chemical weapons deteriorating the situation even more?
- You know, I’m haunted by a feeling of déjà vu. You remember perhaps the pictures of Colin Powell at the UN Security Council with certain white substances. Well, let me address this issue from a purely pragmatic, military point of view. Is there any sense for the Assad government to use a limited quantity of chemical weapons at this stage in the conflict? I don’t want to speculate what Assad or anybody else might do if they are cornered and find themselves in a desperate situation. But this is certainly not the case how things unfold on the ground. Actually, in the last few weeks the government forces seem to be gaining ground rather than losing it, so they have no reason whatsoever to use chemical weapons.
- Was the issue of sending weapons to Syria discussed in EU-Russia talks?
- The EU did not take a decision to send arms to the opposition. The EU failed to reach a decision to prolong the arms embargo. In the absence of an EU-level decision, the issue was reverted back to member states. It’s a bad signal anyway - not only that the EU has been unable to formulate a common position, that I leave to the EU officials to deliberate on. But in the context of the Syrian crisis, they say that this was intended to send a signal to Damascus and make the Assad government more flexible. But I’m asking myself whether those who are saying this have thought through the essence of the signal this is sending to the opposition, because that signal seems to be quite simple: “You guys just need to hold out a few weeks, and then you’ll get the weapons and you will be able to win”. That’s not only a bad signal. It’s a very dangerous one.
- Is Russia supporting President Assad?
- Russia is not supporting Assad. We’re supporting efforts aimed at a political solution because this is the only way. This conflict cannot be resolved by military means. There will need to be a political solution. There will need to be reforms. The problem with Assad and his government is that they failed to implement reforms when they had the time and opportunity. On the international level, we support international law, and we do not want to see the Libyan precedent repeated in Syria. Syria is much more complicated, it is a mixture of various ethnic and religious groups, and geographically placed in very combustible part of the world. So we don’t want any moves on the part of the international community that would disguise an effort to resolve the crisis by military means as it happened in Libya.
- How will the Eurasian Economic Community affect Russia-EU partnership and ties to the World Trade Organisation?
- The Eurasian economic integration, I believe, is an objective process which brings together countries with a common history, a formerly common economy and lots of ties not only between industrial enterprises, but also between societies, individual families. This process has being gaining speed and has taken root already in the form of a Customs Union which from 2015 will turn into a Eurasian Economic Union. There are three member states – Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, a number of applicants to join, and some observers like Ukraine. Whether it brings any additional difficulties in the relationship with the EU - I would say perhaps only in the context of our ongoing negotiations on the future New Basic Agreement with the European Union because the Eurasian Economic integration has reached a stage when a supranational body has been created - the Eurasian Economy Commission, and in some areas national competencies have been shifted to a supranational level, very much like what happened in the European Union itself many years ago with competences delegated to the European Commission. But we are working to agree on an interface between these two processes, and I hope we will succeed.
On WTO: indeed, of the three countries making up the Eurasian Economic Space only Russia today is a WTO member. I expect Kazakhstan to become a member quite soon. It will probably take more time in the case of Belarus where negotiations are at a very initial stage. But whatever is done in the framework of Eurasian economic integration is in full conformity with WTO rules and norms. So there is no contradiction in that.
- You mentioned Ukraine is an observer. Do you see Ukraine joining and is membership tied to a gas discount or Gazprom getting a stake in Ukraine’s pipelines?
- I wouldn’t view the Ukrainian situation as a zero-sum game. First of all, it’s up to Ukrainians to decide what to join and whom to co-operate with. If you compare what the EU and the Eurasian Economic Union are offering to Ukraine, these are different things because the EU has never offered full membership and, in my view, in the foreseeable future will not offer full membership, whereas they are free to join, either as an observer which they have decided or as a full member should they decide to do so, the Eurasian Economic Union. So I think it would be wrong and unfair to Ukraine to pull it into different directions. I think Ukrainians should have a chance to freely decide upon their course of action in that area.
- At the summit, did Russia and the EU discuss the European Commission’s investigation into the market practices of Gazprom? Do you see this Commission prove and differences over the EU Energy Charter becoming a thorn in EU-Russia ties? Will Russia ever accept the European Charter Treaty?
- Energy is omnipresent in the framework of Russia-EU dialogue whether it is summits or at ministerial level or expert level. We do have an energy dialogue running since the year 2000. It has proven to be a useful instrument in addressing mutual concerns of the two sides.
There are some differences popping up now and then, but that’s natural in any relationship between any supplier and any customer. Because if we look at the picture of energy relations between Russia and the EU, we will see that Russia is the largest supplier to the European Union and the EU is our biggest customer. I don’t want to dwell on the details of confidential deliberations by the Commission regarding its competition case against Gazprom, but I would say that I certainly hope this will reach a solution that will be acceptable to both sides.
On gas prices, there is more attention to gas than there is to oil, though the amount of oil exports from Russia to the EU is about seven times bigger than that of gas in money terms. But gas is of course a more sensitive sector.
There is a world market for oil. You can pump oil, or you can stop pumping -- it is much easier to transport and much easier to store. With gas, you either pump it to your consumer or you liquefy it at a certain expense, or you have to burn it at the extraction site. You cannot pump it back into the ground. That is why there is no world market for gas – only for liquefied natural gas (LNG) but the proportion of LNG in global gas consumption is very small. Most of the gas that the EU consumer gets is pipeline gas either from Russia or Norway or Algeria. That is why many years ago when those trunk pipelines were just beginning to be constructed there was a need to have a certain baseline for pricing and that baseline was invented by the then Dutch government and was called the Groningen formula – linking gas prices to oil prices. It was more than 50 years ago. That formula has been successfully implemented all these years, of course with more enthusiasm when the oil prices went down and as a result the gas prices went down; with less enthusiasm when the oil prices were going up. But that’s natural in the market economy. That explains why long-term contracts are important as the basis for a stable energy relationship between Russia and the European Union.
Regarding the Energy Charter and the Energy Charter Treaty, they were invented in 1991 and 1994 as an instrument of securing stable energy supplies from Russia and other post-Soviet countries in the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And it succeeded perhaps in that sense, but the world has moved on. Russia joined the treaty but never ratified it for a number of reasons –it lacked the transit protocol, didn’t cover investment, didn’t cover trade in nuclear materials. Other major energy suppliers took the same position. For example, Norway never ratified the Energy Charter Treaty. So your question: “Will Russia ever accept the Energy Charter Treaty?” My answer would be simple: “Not in its present form, no.” There may be discussions within the Energy Charter process on how to address the future of international legal basis in the energy field, but that’s a different issue.
- You mentioned you couldn’t talk very much about the European Commission investigation into Gazprom. Do you feel pressure from the EU, for example we saw that Gazprom pulled out from the privatisation recently of Greece’s natural gas utility DEPA and there was speculation that there was pressure from the European Commission not to get involved in an EU member state...
- You should ask Gazprom because neither I nor my staff participated in those talks. And I certainly do not wish to fuel any speculations so I will limit myself to the obvious: dealing with any EU member state in energy, one has to take into consideration the so-called Third Energy Package, which with the efforts of the European Commission has become part of EU legislation. Nobody wants to invest in a project to see it contested on the grounds of difference with the acquis communautaire. Besides, I understand it may not be the end of the road because the privatisation process of DEPA will be continued. Will it not?
- Yes, it will and it was discussed also in connection of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline? Does Russia consider Nabucco to be a bigger threat to South Stream than TAP?
- I believe that in the long term Europe will need much more gas than it consumes today. So in the long term, many more pipelines will be required, and in that timeline I don’t see those projects to be in competition with each other. In the short term, the important thing is not to draw a line where this or that pipeline would go and it’s not even getting the money for investment. What is important is to get the gas to fill it because nobody will invest in a pipeline that would remain empty. That is practically the main reason why Nabucco in its original form collapsed because it was never supported by an amount of gas that would be able to fill it. Now it has been downgraded to Nabucco West – and we’ll see how it evolves.
- Relations between Russia and Lithuania are not the best. Do you expect problems from the Lithuanian EU Presidency on energy negotiations since Vilnius complains that they pay much higher prices for it than other EU countries?
- First of all I wouldn’t overdramatize the possible differences that exist in Russian- Lithuanian relations. At least on the humanitarian side, we don’t have problems with Lithuania like we have with other two Baltic countries where Russian-speaking minorities have been accorded a peculiar status of non-citizens – that’s not the case in Lithuania. But we have issues that we have to face together. One is geographic – transit to Kaliningrad through Lithuanian territory, but also energy.
This brings us back to the Third Energy Package with its provisions. The Third Energy Package did not have an easy life to begin with – some of its provisions were restated to provide individual countries with a series of options to choose from. The three Baltic countries in terms of energy supply are in a unique position because their whole energy supply comes from one source which is Russia. That is the way things developed over the decades, and that gives them the possibility to ask for exemptions from the Third Energy Package, something which both Latvia and Estonia did, and they got them. Whereas the Lithuanian government chose the most restrictive option of Third Energy Package implementation of all, which resulted in de-facto nationalisation of an existing gas pipeline which was owned by a Russian-German joint venture, something I would call forced nationalisation. The company was ordered to sell the pipeline within a limited time period. But, overall, we look forward to co-operating with the Lithuanian presidency. Of course, now in this post-Lisbon era of European integration the role of rotating EU presidency has contracted – all foreign policy issues are dealt through Catherine Ashton and her External Action Service, but still on issues like energy the rotating presidency does have a prominent role and we recognise that and will be looking forward to co-operating with the Lithuanian Presidency in this and other areas.
- Are talks on human rights and democracy an issue of tension in EU-Russia relations?
- Human rights are an important element in our political dialogue. We have an established form of human rights consultations, the last round took place in May here in Brussels. We have mutual concerns; we address the concerns the EU has in human rights situation in Russia. Our EU colleagues address our human rights concerns in EU member states and we look at the global human rights situation and issues like, for example, the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights.
