Europe as a Soft Power

Event Report

On April 2nd 2009, the Center for EU Enlargement Studies in cooperation with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung held an international conference entitled “ Europe as a Soft Power”. The underlying assumption of the conference was that soft power of the European Union has played an important role in its enlargement policy as demonstrated by the transformation of Central and Eastern European countries. In addition, the EU increasingly sees itself as a soft power that should use norm diffusion as a source of influence in its relations with its neighbors and around the globe. However the gloomy prospects of further enlargements question the leverage and potential of EU soft power in the future and call for further examination thereof. The conference addressed various aspects of EU foreign policy – enlargement policy, neighborhood policy, EU-Russia relations – and analyzed the type and degree of influence that it asserts. In addition to a conceptual overview of EU soft power, each panel examined relevant policy issues and analyzed the role that the EU plays in various conflict situations, i.e. in the Georgia-Russia conflict or the energy conflict.

The keynote lecture was delivered by János Herman, principal advisor of the External Relations Directorate General of the European Commission. He started his lecture by stating that the EU is a new sui generis subject of international relations and the precise definition of its soft power is also contested. When speaking of EU soft power, for instance, should we think of it as the sum of its member states’ power, or as something else? Herman also pointed out in his presentation that the development of the EU’s roles and policies coincided with times of shifting power and the gradually diminishing importance of hard power.
Mr Herman distinguished between three core aspects of the EU’s power: the external projection of its inner activities; regional initiatives; and CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) and ESDP (European Security and Defense Policy). It is a special mix of these core powers that constitute the backbone of the ‘smart’ soft power of the EU. Herman provided a few examples of EU soft power in practice. Enlargement policy, he pointed out, goes beyond classical foreign policy as it aims to integrate countries, and thereby demonstrates the transformative role of the EU. At the same time the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) aims to draw neighbors closer to the EU without offering a membership perspective. The new initiative, the Eastern Partnership shows that the EU is capable of responding to changing demands and priorities. The Eastern Partnership involves association agreements and free trade agreements as the main ‘carrots’, as well as visa liberalization, institution building programs and a cohesion program (a mirror of internal cohesion programs).
Finally, Herman emphasized that even though the EU is clearly an actor across the world, it is still not a global actor, because it cannot decide on the use of its power by itself. He also added that if there will be an ‘EU doctrine’ emerging, soft power, as well as multilateralism will surely constitute an important part of it.

Session 1
Conceptual Foundations
Michael Lake, former EU Ambassador to Turkey, and to Hungary
Anne- Marie Le Gloannec, Director of Reseaerch, CERI, Sciences Po, Paris
Zsolt Pataki, Head of Department, European Foreign and Security Policy Department, MFA, Hungary

The first panel examined some of the conceptual foundations of EU soft power.
Michael Lake, pointed out that the EU was using soft power before the term was even coined or before it even started defining itself as a soft power. He provided some specific examples of where the EU derives its soft power: it is the largest trading partner in the world; it is the greatest donor of development and humanitarian assistance, and it is a leader in enacting policies fostering sustainable development, and multilateralism. When contrasted with hard power, he also underlined that soft power is cheaper and likely to be longer-lasting. Lake also emphasized that decisions over the use of soft power lie in the hands of member states, and therefore its future use will also be decided by them.
Anne-Marie Le Gloannec, spoke of the limitations of soft power and what lie behind it. As far as the conceptual basis is concerned, she pointed out that the term is somewhat overused and lacks precision. Often times soft power goes beyond simple persuasion and can be interpreted even as manipulation. According to Le Gloannec, we can only speak of soft power, where there is also ‘structural power’ (according to its definition by Susan Strange). In trade relations, for instance, there is an asymmetry and a structural imbalance in negotiations that also affect outcomes. Acquis conditionality, or transporting legislation to external areas, what Le Gloannec dubbed as ‘externalization’ can also be problematic – when we take into consideration that tools and practices that were used in Ireland, for instance, are adopted in Georgia. One further limitation of EU soft power that Le Gloannec pointed out is that ‘sticks’ (tools of enforcement) are very limited.
Zsolt Pataki, of the European Foreign and Security Policy Department of Hungary’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, emphasized that Hungary regards enlargement with structural importance among EU policies. He emphasized both sides of the enlargement coin: membership has to come across as a truly credible perspective for candidates, and at the same time, these candidates have to keep up measures to comply with the criteria laid down by the EU. Pataki also pointed out that the Eastern Partnership should be enhanced with a membership perspective, so that EU leverage can be greater.

Session 2
Enlargement Policy
Sir David Logan, Former British Ambassador to Turkey
Mihailo Crnobrnja, FEFA, Serbia
Visnja Smardzija, Institute for International Relations, Croatia
Bernhard Stahl, Stuttgart University

The second panel of the day concentrated on present day enlargement policy– that is, towards the Western-Balkans and Turkey.
Sir David Logan, spoke on EU-Turkish relations. He defined soft power as a cooperation between user and object, but posed the question what happens if this cooperation breaks down? Logan assumed that this is what happened in the case of EU-Turkish relations. Turkey on the one hand started losing faith in its accession process as they felt that the EU was procrastinating the process by relying on things like the absorption capacity. The EU on the other hand started losing interest in the relations as it developed a distrust towards the Muslim world in general, which were further reinforced by events such as the Dutch/French rejection of the European Constitution. As a result of these developments, the attractiveness of EU membership in the eyes of the Turkish public was seriously damaged - which from the classical definition of soft power is a breakdown of its functioning.
Professor Mihailo Crnobrnja (download presentation) focused on the changes that occurred in EU conditionality towards Yugoslavia, Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia throughout the years. He differentiated between two kinds of conditionality – ‘regular’ conditionality, comprising mainly of the Copenhagen criteria; and the ‘extraordinary’ conditionalities, applied to the country in focus. While regular conditionality was accepted and its implementation started immediately, the extra conditionalities referring to state restructuring, and re-drawing political maps created problems. In addition, the EU was inconsistent in the conditions it tied to 'carrots' – the prime example of which was insisting on keeping Serbia and Montenegro together and than letting go of this principle. He concluded that the EU is strong in Europeanization through conditionality, but weak in pursuing political agendas. The track record of the soft power is thus mixed.
The Croatian perspective of the EU and its soft power through enlargement was delivered by Visnja Samardzija (download presentation). She underlined that the Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) through which the EU aimed for stabilizing and consolidating the region can be generally deemed to be successful. This policy consisted of the SAA agreements, Interim Agreements, Accession partnerships, as well as financial assistance, in addition to special SAP criteria (cooperation with the ICTY and regional integration). So, generally the EU’s transformative power with regard to the region is working. Croatia has serious tasks lying ahead to finish negotiations. But, the EU from its part also has a few shortcomings that should be addressed. Most important among these is to develop mechanisms to neutralize member states’ grievances and not to let bilateral issues affect the negotiations process. This in the case of Croatia refers to its border dispute with Slovenia, but the remark also applies to bilateral disputes between Macedonia and Greece, as well as the case of Cyprus.
The thesis of Bernhard Stahl (download presentation), who also addressed Serbian - EU relations was that the soft power, and the conditionality of the EU has been ineffective towards Serbia because of its insistence on cooperating with the ICTY and the independence of Kosovo. Due to these (what Prof. Crnobrnja earlier dubbed as ‘extraordinary’ conditionalities) the normal conditionality principle has been overstretched, which had an impact on its effectiveness. He recommended a decoupling of original conditionality principles from added ones.

Session 3
Neighborhood Policy
Volodymyr Yermolenko, Internews Ukraine
Halya Senyk, European Partnership for Democracy
Gergely Romsics, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs

The third panel of the conference dealt with European Neighborhood Policy as an instrument of EU soft power.
Volodymyr Yermolenko (download presentation) argued for stronger incentives for Ukraine within the Eastern Partnership (EP). He emphasized that the fact that Ukraine’s progress is compared to other neighboring states does not provide a strong incentive for further achievements. In addition, the Commission Progress Reports are too positive which also results in a lack of incentives for reforms. He argued that without a membership perspectives, no serious reform processes will be started. Yermolenko also looked at EU energy policy as a case of EU soft power. In this case, however, he pointed out that soft power mechanisms are not enough when Russia is creating a competition of hard power. According to his interpretation, if Ukraine’s GTS would be kept as the major transit route of Russian gas, then Russia would have to deal with Europe as one single market, instead of playing the countries against each other.
Representing the European Partnership for Democracy, Halya Senyk (download presentation) spoke of democracy assistance as a pillar of the EU’s soft power, with special emphasis of democracy assistance towards countries of the European Partnership. Senyk pointed out that the major challenge to democracy promotion by the EU today is that there is no coherent framework to carry out these activities, but rather they are conducted on a member state basis. The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) is a joint initiative for democracy promotion, however it mostly limits itself to election monitoring or human rights activities. Civil and political society is mostly neglected from this regard. The European Partnership for Democracy aims to contribute to a more cohesive EU approach to democracy assistance and in relation to the European Partnership aims to involve civil society more in the joint programs.
Taking a more general perspective of ENP, Gergely Romsics of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs focused on providing a few recommendations that in his view would contribute to strengthening the (soft) power of the EU in neighboring countries. According to his analysis, the neighborhood policy has been constructed in an ad hoc manner, the result of which was that enlargement policy theory was adapted to a very different environment. However, if there is no enlargement after the Western-Balkans for the foreseeable future (which is most likely the case) than ENP needs to be re-thought. Romsics proposed the establishment of common institutions (beyond the already existing sectoral coordination mechanisms) in order to overcome the dilemma.

Session 4
EU - Russia Relations
Igor Torbakov, Finish Institute of International Relations
Dominik Tolksdorf, Center for Applied Policy Research, Munich
Nicu Popescu, European Council on Foreign Relations

The last panel of the day focused on EU – Russia relations.
Dominik Tolksdorf (download presentation) started with the bold statement, that Russia in pursuing its geopolitical agenda uses its neighborhood as a buffer zone and tries to maintain them as controlled democracies which makes it difficult for the EU to promote democracy and stability in the same zone. Therefore, he suggested that solving frozen conflicts, and territorial issues is a precondition for further democratization efforts. He maintained that the EU needs to find a united stance in relation to these issues.
The other side of the issue, Russia’s viewpoint of the EU was presented by Igor Torbakov. He emphasized that Russia views international relations as characterized by competition and sees the world today as chaotic, being in flux. From the Kremlin’s point of view only the USA is a sovereign democracy besides Russia among the world players. Therefore the EU cannot be treated on the level of a sovereign actor, which leads to its approach of dealing with member states on a bilateral basis. Therefore Torbakov interpreted EU – Russia relations as a clash of two mega-discourses, Europe which sees itself as a soft power, and Russia which looks at itself as a sovereign power.
Nicu Popescu in his intervention outlined how Russia’s soft power (in addition to its hard power) is obstructing the core goals of the ENP and Eastern Partnership. While Russia seems to be using hard power more (sanctions, military presence), it also has significant soft power tools. These include the media, the Russian Orthodox Church, visa free regimes to CIS countries, or NGO support for Russia-friendly organizations. In addition, as a reaction to the Rose Revolution, Russia developed its concept of ‘sovereign democracy’ which was to signal that the West should not dictate the definitions of democracy. Thus, while the ENP is trying to create a ring of democratic, prosperous, stable countries, in fact the neighborhood is becoming rapidly more autocratic.

April 6 , 2009

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