EU looks for Eastern dawn to move from Russia's shadow

Prague - It is nothing if not ambitious: with two summits in Prague, the European Union wants to teach six former-Soviet states to be model democrats, break its dependency on Russian gas supplies and guarantee its own access to energy for decades to come. 'The EU is founding peace and stability, not just for member states, but for the region around the EU,' Swedish premier Fredrik Reinfeldt had said as he arrived in Prague on Thursday. But disagreements between EU member states and clashes with partners in Eastern Europe, the Caspian region and the Middle East threaten that ambition - and risk leaving the EU at the mercy of developments among its neighbours. On Thursday and Friday, the EU launched two new initiatives intended to stabilize its Eastern neighbourhood and blaze a trail for new energy pipelines to the Caspian Sea and Middle East. The 'Eastern Partnership,' launched Thursday, aims to encourage Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine to bring in democratic reforms by offering them trade and travel privileges. 'Security and prosperity in Europe depend on the stability of the Eastern partners,' German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned at the partnership's opening summit. The 'Southern Corridor,' launched Friday, is a political deal with Azerbaijan, Egypt, Georgia and Turkey aimed at clearing the way for the construction of new oil and gas pipelines across the region. The EU currently depends on Russia for a quarter of all the oil and gas it burns - a reliance EU leaders are keen to reduce. 'Russia is, and will be in the future, our main energy supplier ... but the basic, understandable need that we have in Europe is to have additional resources,' the head of the EU's executive, Jose Manuel Barroso, said. The goals themselves are hardly controversial: EU leaders have regularly called for the bloc to boost its energy independence and its influence among its Eastern neighbours since the shock war between Russia and Georgia in August. Nor are the EU's methods particularly radical, offering the countries concerned money, trade and travel privileges in return for the reforms and resources the bloc would like to see. 'I will tell them this, this and this, and they'll say, 'Then give us this and that.' That's politics,' said Reinfeldt, who is set to take over the EU's rotating presidency in July. But the success of the two summits is anything but assured, with serious question-marks remaining over the commitment of both the EU and the Eastern states to the initiatives. Ahead of the Eastern Partnership summit, EU diplomats reported that not one of the partner states saw it as a priority, pushing instead for special bilateral treatment from the EU and demanding more visa and trade concessions, and less emphasis on human rights. The six 'are interested in developing economic cooperation faster than political,' Czech deputy premier Alexandr Vondra said. And while Merkel, the leader of the EU's largest state, called the Eastern Partnership an 'important dimension' of EU policy, not one of the top leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Spain attended the launching summit - Italy, indeed, sending only its labour minister. Doubts also hung over the two sides' commitment to the Southern Corridor idea, after they scrapped a call for a 'corridor agreement' aimed at setting out rules for sharing out energy transit fees - instead calling limply for unspecified 'arrangements.' Those questions deepened when it was revealed that summit guests Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan had not signed the final declaration - although EU officials said that this had never been planned. And while EU members agreed in September that it was time to 'intensify the EU's efforts' to reduce its reliance on Russian gas, some of their biggest energy firms are already working on building further pipelines to the country. As the series of summits closed, Barroso said that they showed that the EU was 'serious' about its new relationships to the East. But with questions hanging over the commitment of both sides to both deals, it remains to be seen whether the initiatives will bring a new dawn for EU policy - or sink quietly below the horizon.