Regional Integration in Eastern Europe
Vladimir Dunaev

Summary

The year 2009 gave rise to optimistic expectations for regional integration headway in Eastern Europe, while 2010 was a year of a strategic pause. Against the background of a thaw in EU-Russia relations, the ideological flatulence in this part of the continent fell off noticeably. The heads of state, who used to claim regional leadership, prefer to distance themselves from this mission now for the benefit of economic pragmatism and political realism. In 2010, the two chief players, which determine the format of Eastern European integration – Poland and Ukraine – were busy with redefining their role in regional processes thus refraining from bilateral projects or promotion of multilateral integration initiatives.
The institutionalized forms of regional cooperation failed to overcome stagnation in 2010. Neither the GUAM Organization for Democracy and Economic Development, nor the Eastern Partnership has achieved visible success. Only the Euro-Asian Oil Transport Corridor Project (EAOTC) based on the Odessa-Brody pipeline was driven from the deadlock under pressure of external circumstances. Although Azerbaijani oil was finally streamed through the main, the prospects of diversification of Caspian hydrocarbons delivery to Europe via the EAOTC remain dim.

• Other parts of the meridional energy transport cluster that anchors the regional economic space on the North-South axis saw no appreciable progress. After the success achieved in 2009, the transport-logistics system of Pan-European Transport Corridor IX ran against serious contradictions between the parties to the agreement on the shuttle train Viking.

Tendencies:

• Basic participants in the integration process in Eastern Europe rethink their roles and missions;
• Depoliticization of joint projects succeeds ideological pretentiousness of cooperation;
• Belarusian leaders manifest ambivalence towards the country’s involvement  in Eastern European integration projects;
• EU takes less interest in integration processes in Eastern Europe; regional cooperation projects are slowed down or suspended.

The process of regionalization in Eastern Europe, where political and economic cooperation largely depends on geopolitical interests of the EU and Russia has become distinct in the past few years. It is not just cooperation for the promotion of internal commerce as it was in EU, but also a strong effort to come out to the external politico-economical  space and use this process to tackle the multidimensional problem of domestic security and development.

Eastern European historic policy

Prosperity of EU members in many respects depends on a transformation of the “ring of friends” around the Union into a zone of peace and stability. This Neighborhood Policy however turned out to be a legitimization of new dialectics of the European space: the family of European nations on the one side and those who should be only treated as neighbors on the other side. The status of such neighbors was given to Ukraine and Lebanon, Belarus and Morocco, Russia and Egypt. As a matter of fact, the new neighborhood concept has proved to be unresponsive to the actual diversity of the European outskirts.
The post-Soviet states of Eastern Europe concerned over their European prospects were not too enthusiastic about the newly engineered “neighbor” identity molded by the template of classic Orientalism. On the other hand, proclamation of the dialectic structure of the new European reality did not dispel suspicions of EU expansionism. Russia reacted to the aggression against its “canonical” territories rather painfully, explaining that among other things it destructs the unity brought forth by the “common, objective history” (Sergey Lavrov). The Eastern Partnership Program irritated Russia even more. The country mobilized resources of transnational historic policy to oppose this new threat.
Unlike politicization of history typical of this region, national historic politics do not rest upon the ideological monopoly of totalitarian regimes anymore. It is a combination of practices aimed at mobilization of administrative and financial resources of a state by certain political forces to indoctrinate historic consciousness and collective memory of the entire society by means of political control over interpretation of history in science and education; attempts to regulate interpretation of historic evidence by using legislative tools; creation of special institutions to supervise archives and publishers1 . Since the regions are more like virtual communities like nations, regional symbolical mobilization by means of historic policies can play a big role in shaping of this space.
Two competing Polish projects of transnational leadership stand against Russia’s imperial ambitions in Eastern Europe. A heated discussion of eastern policy paradigms was stirred up in the Polish media in 2009. Bartolomej Sienkiewicz2 , expert in post-Soviet politics, who works closely with the dominant Civil Platform party, and Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski3 published articles that were interpreted as an appeal to admit the failure of Jagiellon imperial ambitions of Poland in the East. The criticism was not only addressed to political competitors from the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc) party, but also attacked one of the major foreign policy paradigms of the Third Rzech Pospolita with its cornerstone idea of Poland’s responsibility for the future of the eastern neighbors.
The Poles call the Civil Platform’s strategy with its all-European security policy prioritized over relations with the eastern neighbors “the policy of the Piasts.” This historic image taken from the XIX century politics is supposed to emblemize Poland’s involvement in the European project in the East as a counter to imperial ambitions of the Jagiellons4 .
Apart from other considerations, the Civil Platform called on to change the historic and political paradigm because the Jagiellonian ideology cannot bring the neighboring countries to recognize the historic role of Polish transnational leadership.
The reaction of Ukraine with Viktor Yushchenko in office was the greatest disappointment. Ukrainian historic policy had not modified the Cossack dominion myth in terms of its anti-Polish message. The situation was aggravated even more when Ukraine came out with its own interpretation of the national liberation movement and heroized persons absolutely unacceptable for the Poles. Although Viktor Yanukovich provided an updated evaluation of their legacy last year, Ukraine has not offered any options of harmonization of the regional historic policy. The Ukrainian government would like to eliminate historic matters from economic and political approaches to Eastern European affairs.
The Lithuanian historic and political paradigm was not suitable to lay a foundation for regional unity either. The country views the neighbors’ attempts to lay claim to the legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in order to cultivate their own historic myths with a great deal of suspicion that does not help to create a proper image of transnational history. The year 2010 was marked with increased political tension between Lithuania and Poland and the conflict of interpretations of the XX century history is one of the reasons.
The 600th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald celebrated in 2010 could be used as an occasion to work out a joint variant of Eastern Europe’s history. In a meeting held in 2009 in Kyiv, the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine suggested joint celebrating of this historic event. President Kaczynski wanted the presidents of all states Viktorious in the Battle of Grunwald to come together so that he could nail down the Jagiellonian version of the regional history. Even Belarusian officials displayed readiness to tailor national history in view of European prospects. Experts noted that the Grunwald mythology even obscured the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) mythology a little in the 2010 official discourse5 .
All attributes of the anniversary festivities like the Belarusian five-episode film shown on BT channel and commemorative coins were supposed to certify claims of the Belarusians to a decent place in the regional historic myth. The neighbors’ muted reaction to this aspiration of official Minsk did not strengthen the Eastern European vector in the historic policy of the Belarusian government.
In 2010, Eastern Europe failed to come closer to coordination of the national mythologies and a harmonized image of transnational history. The year passed in an atmosphere of reappraisal of values and willingness to sacrifice the regional historic policy for political realism and economic pragmatism.

Institutionalization

A very low degree of institutionalization is typical of integration processes in the Eastern Europe. Countries of this multinational region cooperate by a moderate scenario which does not require any essential sovereignty cession. The motley, heterogeneous composition of participants in integration projects, which diverge considerably from each other with respect to political choices, economic development, and foreign policy strategies, is changing all the time depending on circumstances6 .
GUAM formed by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova in 1997 as an advisory body is the oldest regional organization in Eastern Europe. It transformed into the International Organization for Democracy and Economic Development at the 2006 Kyiv summit7 .
GUAM entered the year 2010 hearing a disturbing signal coming from Ukraine. President Yanukovich criticized this organization in one of his pre-election speeches. Some political analysts hoped that Ukraine would withdraw from this “anti-Russian bloc” after the presidential election but this failed to materialize. On April, 18, 2010, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Konstantin Grishchenko told Inter TV Channel that it was not about withdrawal but GUAM’s economic augmentation. Ukrainian leaders suggested concentrating on transport and energy transit rather than political projects to have real feedback8 .
GUAM still senses depression even after Ukraine’s explanations. Despite optimism displayed by the GUAM Secretariat, the summit scheduled for 2010 had to be cancelled. In many respects the crisis is caused by concurrence of the new Polish initiative, the Eastern Partnership, which has a powerful and rich sponsor – the European Union. Even the relatively modest budget of the Eastern Partnership outweighs GUAM’s own resources hundredfold.
Besides, the new European program attempts to involve new countries – Armenia and Belarus – in the integration processes in Eastern Europe, which is its advantage. Acting President of Moldova Mihai Ghimpu visited Tbilisi on August 17, 2010 to negotiate Belarus’ membership in GUAM with Mikheil Saakashvili. Alexander Lukashenko was invited to Georgia to talk about the suggestion.
Tbilisi thought it was a propitious moment to offer integration given the Belarusian-Russian controversies of that time9 . GUAM was hoping for a positive reply from Minsk by the year end. Although Lukashenko did not go to Georgia, a representative of Belarus was expected to take part in the 13th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers on December 2, 2010 in Astana within the framework of the OSCE summit. However, regional cooperation within GUAM is not attractive enough to the Belarusian government. During a press conference held December 20, Lukashenko actually dismissed the idea of such alliance. Belarus prefers to cooperate with organization members separately working on oil transportation projects avoiding the risk to get involved in the joint policy, which the Kremlin might take as hostile.
As regards the EU Eastern Partnership project, it was first introduced in May 2008 as a joint initiative of Poland and Sweden10 . In 2010, the parties engaged in seventeen projects and a number of fundamental initiatives aimed at arrangement of the member countries’ teamwork.
Around €250 million will be allocated from the budget of the European Neighborhood and Partnership Instrument to foster multilateral cooperation in 2010-2013. In addition, the European Investment Bank has launched the Eastern Partners Facility with €1.5 billion intended for investment into the partner countries supplementing the old external mandate of the European Investment Bank for Eastern European region (€3.7 billion). Belarus however failed to access the bank’s resources in 2010 that limits its opportunities as a partner in bilateral projects but motivates to participate in multilateral regional cooperation.
Belarus was initially supposed to enter the Eastern Partnership as an associate participant. The country remains the only partner, which is not allowed to fully participate in the European Neighborhood Program for political reasons. The agreement on partnership and cooperation signed by EU and Belarus in 1995 has not been ratified and has not taken effect due to violation of fundamental democratic rights and liberties in the country. While the agreement is not ratified, Belarus is unable to obtain the status of a full partner of the European Neighborhood Program and, consequently, it has no access to all Eastern Partnership programs.
From the point of view of international regional policy, it means that Belarus has to focus on joint projects with the neighboring countries. Alongside cross-border cooperation projects under the neighborhood programs (Baltic Sea Region, Latvia-Lithuania-Belarus, Poland-Ukraine-Belarus), in late 2009, Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine applied to the EU for financing of nineteen projects in the sectors of integrated border management, transport, energy, and culture with an emphasis on strategic offers concerning development of the meridional energy transport cluster and Euro-Asian Oil Transport Corridor, which determine the entire Eastern European posture.
The hopes that these projects would be launched in 2010 faded quickly. In a meeting held September 8 in Minsk, the foreign ministers of the said countries had to get back to their application following the preliminary examination conducted by the European Commission. The ministers voiced hope that four to seven projects of the Three will be examined during the 13 December session of the Eastern Partnership foreign ministers. They did not clear up the projects’ future, though.
The “Kyiv Initiative” of the Eastern Partnership – a mechanism of trilateral cooperation between Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus in the field of security policy, energy, ecology, etc. initiated by the three presidents in 2009 – was put on strategic pause in 2010. This regional cooperation project was stopped in its tracks apparently because a new president took office in Ukraine.
The Eastern Partnership’s Parliamentary Assembly (Euronest) could not get to work in 2010 due to disagreements over Belarus’ participation format. So, the institutionalized forms of regional cooperation in Eastern Europe were not too efficient last year. It concerns both GUAM and the EU Eastern Partnership, which has not been given a status of organization yet.

Regional energy transport cluster

Formation of a high-capacity energy transport cluster in this geographical region spurs the national elites to look for strategies and tactics of regional cooperation and integration. Development of the Trans-European and international transport corridors, first of all the 9th intermodal corridor with a possible entrance to the Asian market via Caucasus (Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia, TRACECA), creation of the Baltic-Black Sea oil trunk pipeline, and projects in the gas transport sector pave the way for a joint strategy of integration into the global economic environment. For the first time, the meridional mains and macro-logistic systems, which maintain transportation of energy resources and commodities on the North-South axis, give the involved countries a huge integration resource (they used to be poorly integrated due to orientation to the West-East axis).
The meridional projects and intensified economic and political interaction between the Eastern European countries can be regarded as an attempt to create a space for survival under pressure of stiffened competition on the part of alternative energy transportation projects initiated by Russia, which wants to diminish dependence on Eastern European transit countries. These challenges have already resulted in appreciable rapprochement and strategic cooperation between the countries in the East of Europe.
In this region, diversification of sources and ways of hydrocarbons delivery to Europe rests upon the Euro-Asian Oil Transportation Corridor (EAOTC), mostly the Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk main with several routes of transportation of natural and liquefied gas within the framework of the Southern Gas Corridor.
The idea of the EAOTC came in mid-1990s as a project on delivery of Caspian oil to Western and Central Europe, bypassing the congested Bosporus. Ukraine managed to lay a pipeline from Odessa to Brody near its western border by its own forces, but failed to achieve the designed capacity after it lost the competitive battle for Azerbaijani hydrocarbons to the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeihan main. In 2004-2010 the Ukrainian pipeline transported Russian oil from Samara to Odessa in a reverse regime. For all those years, the plan to get back to the original transportation route from South to the North has been connected with completion of the Polish section of the pipeline up to Plock.
The governments of Ukraine and Poland and the European Commission signed a joint declaration of support for the EAOTC project on May 23, 2003 in Brussels. In 2007, the national oil transportation companies of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Lithuania entered Sarmatia joint venture established by Poland and Ukraine to develop the EAOTC. The feasibility report approved on April, 24, 200911 was supposed to be presented in early 2010 at the Batumi energy summit to give new urgency to one of the region’s major economic projects.
Leaders of twelve countries including the presidents of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and Poland were expected to attend the 5th energy summit on January 14, 2010. A representative of Belarus was invited to a forum of the kind for the first time. However, none of the presidents could come for various reasons and the summit was postponed. The year came to an end but the summit remained ink on paper12 . Apart from other minor issues, everyone was waiting for Ukraine’s new energy strategies following the presidential election.
Changes were brought about but the scenario was totally different to what Sarmatia stockholders were planning on. The new president of Ukraine had to resuscitate the EAOTC after Russia stopped oil deliveries through Brody-Odessa main in the middle of the year and partly drained the southern string of Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. Belarus suggested filling the pipe with oil from Venezuela. The Ukrainian government would probably not dare to reorient the Odessa-Brody main, if it had not been for the frustrated agreement with Russia on guaranteed oil transit through Ukraine.
Putin left Kyiv October 27, 2010 without a mutually acceptable solution. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev made an official visit to Ukraine on the same day. He confirmed Azerbaijan’s interest in transit of hydrocarbons through Ukraine. Earlier, on October 18, President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, who visited Russia and Belarus shortly before, assured his Ukrainian counterpart that Venezuela would supply enough oil to Belarus to maintain economically viable operation of the Odessa-Brody pipeline. Chavez tried to set Yanukovich at ease regarding Russian’s reaction to operating the pipeline in reverse regime. During a joint press conference, he said he reached a consensus with Vladimir Putin. So the Ukrainians finally agreed to a test delivery of oil to the Mazyr refinery in Belarus through Odessa-Brody pipeline and the southern string of Friendship on November 20-23, 2010.
But the EAOTC could only be brought back to life using the Ukrainian pipe by pumping Caspian hydrocarbons bypassing Turkish straits. Therefore, Belarus’ intention to substitute South American oil with Azerbaijani or other Caspian oil by a swap scheme was of vital importance. Although the guaranteed volume of hydrocarbons transported to Belarus in 2011 was considerably smaller than originally planned, the turn of the pipe from the South to the North made it possible to connect consumers of Azeri Light in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Ukrtransnafta also talked about interest of Polish refineries to Azerbaijani light crude oil specifically beneficial considering high prices of the raw material.
Construction of the Brody-Plock-Gdansk string of the EAOTC has been frozen. In 2009, Poland suggested postponing the project launch due to the financial and economic recession. Nevertheless, Poland keeps the EAOTC on the list of high priority projects under the Infrastructure and Environment Operational Program. Russia’s declining interest in Friendship pipeline makes it possible to shorten the EAOTC project dates using the available pipeline transportation system13 .
Sergey Skripka, Director General of Sarmatia consortium, says the route used to deliver oil to Belarus can be also used to transport oil from the Caspian region to Poland. It is 400 kilometers longer than the planned one, but there is no need to wait until the pipeline coming from Brody is laid. The feasibility report says completion of the Odessa-Brody-Plock-Gdansk oil transportation system will cost USD2 to 8 billion, and sources of financing have not been determined yet, but the Belarusian route could simplify creation of the EAOTC and make it considerably cheaper.
Belarus was assigned a key point in this system of coordinates. For the first time, Minsk could exercise influence upon energy security of the Eastern European region essentially by making a strategic choice. Belarus and its neighbors could obtain effective leverage to withstand Russia’s oil transit blackmail and at the same time have an energy transport cluster to influence processes of economic integration in the area from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. However, political and economic decisions of the Belarusian authorities made in late 2010 regarding ratification of the Customs Union agreements and the consequences it faced following the 19 December events made this opportunity quite unrealistic.
The ongoing formation of the meridional energy transportation cluster in Eastern Europe is not only a series of ambitious projects, such as the Euro-Asian Oil Transportation Corridor, but also already successful elements of the Baltic-Black Sea logistics system. This transportation-logistics complex is based on European Transport Corridor IX. The North-South concept of this corridor was proposed by the EU ministers of transport in 1993 in Helsinki. This corridor is supposed to connect the North and the South of Europe14 .
The shuttle train Viking is a symbol of effective development of the logistics capacities of Transport Corridor IX. The train intended for railing of large goods vehicles and cargo containers started hauling from Klaipeda to Odessa and back in 2003. The EU Transport Commission distinguished the Viking as the best European project of 2009. In 2010, the train transported 10% more cargoes year on year (41804 TEU).
The festive mood was however clouded last year when Lithuania criticized their Ukrainian partners. In advance of Viktor Yanukovich’s visit to Lithuania, Ambassador to Ukraine Petras Vaitiekunas said it seemed that Ukraine was standing aback from the project: the Viking carried 98% of cargoes between Lithuania and Belarus, and Ukraine’s share only constituted 2%. This point was among major issues negotiated October 14, 2010 during the visit of the Ukrainian president to Vilnius15 .
In 2010, President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite made another attempt to hook up the Turkish direction to the regional route and officially suggested Turkey joining the trilateral agreement between Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine16 .
Transport Corridor IX could cover a huge and rapidly developing economic space reaching Western China. EU experts persistently recommended Belarus to consider joining the international project of the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA)backstopped by the European Union. Belarus remains the only Eastern Partnership member, which has not been involved in this project. In turn, Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine entertained fallacious hopes for financial support needed to implement their transportation-logistics projects within the framework of Eastern Partnership programs like construction of the Vilnius-Minsk-Kyiv highway and development of the Viking piggyback route. Last year saw no progress in dealing with problems of Transport Corridor IX, though.

Conclusion

Integration processes in Eastern Europe have their ups and downs. 2010 was a year of a strategic pause. The countries of the region faced the task to formulate a new strategy of cooperation under the conditions of thawed relations between Russia and Europe. The banner of solidarity against Russia’s expansionism became less attractive to the political elites for a while. The countries mostly focus on their own security, political realism, and economic pragmatism.
EU’s interest in Eastern European integration projects is fading in the face of challenges from the South that pushes Belarus’ neighbors towards an idealess policy of survival by themselves and all together. Given this value system, the Belarusian regime can count on a greater degree of integration into regional economic cooperation processes than before.