Brussels, 08/11/2004 (Agence Europe) - The EU/Russia summit originally planned for Thursday 11 November in The Hague has been postponed at Moscow's request. No new date has been announced yet but the Dutch presidency envisages a meeting taking place towards the middle of December. Officially, the Russian government justified this postponement by citing President Vladimir Putin's wish to meet the new European Commission of José Manuel Barroso, whose investiture is due to take place on 18 November. A Kremlin spokesperson explained that, "There is a very simple explanation for the postponement. The new European Commission has not yet been approved. Delays (in its implementation) mean that summit preparations have not been as effective as everyone would have wished. It therefore appears more opportune to hold the summit after the new Commission is up and running".
On Monday the official explanations by the European Commission spokesperson declared that it understood the wishes of the Russian authorities to "meet their future interlocutors but for European diplomats there is not doubt that the real reason for postponing the summit is that negotiations on road maps for creating the four common spaces between the EU and Russia are not progressing enough and that it would, in any case, have been impossible to reach an agreement on Thursday". The Commission spokesperson explained that Moscow had "not been as forthcoming on some issues as we had hoped". Several problems still need resolving in the negotiations, such as the negotiations structures: The Europeans want to adopt road maps in the form of an overall balanced package (including the four spaces) but the Russians are demanding that dossiers where consensus already exists are adopted without waiting for the whole of the pending questions to be settled in all the four spaces (this negotiations tactic was rejected by a European negotiator as a being a "pick and choose" and therefore unacceptable). But there are also more deep-seated differences regarding "external security" for example. The EU is determined that this is included in the concept of intensified cooperation with Moscow on common neighbourhood issues, particularly in connection with Moldova and Georgia. Russia rejects this concept because it does not want the EU to play a role in cases which it considers as being in its own sphere of influence. European diplomats underline that the Russian minister of foreign affairs is not being realistic when he states that obtaining an agreement is possible, unless there is close common neighbourhood cooperation. One diplomat stated that "it is high time that president Putin took these issues on board if we are to move forward". The Russians have formulated demands that the EU finds unacceptable on an institutional and competency level, such as much more intensive cooperation (beyond purely civilian aspects) in crisis management and European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Other divergences involve "regular dialogue" on human and minority rights that the EU would like to establish with Russia, as well as rights on flying over Siberia by European airlines and Russian energy price policies.
Last week during the General Affairs Council on 2 November, where some of the preparations for the summit took place (EUROPE 3 November p 11), EU foreign affairs ministers underlined that the EU wanted an agreement on the four spaces but not at any price. The president of the Council, Bernard Bot told the press that, "We are not going to give up our goal of an overall balanced package in order to get an agreement on 11 November. We are going to take the necessary time to obtain an ambitious and balanced agreement on all the four spaces".
In an internal note approved by the General Affairs Council, the EU's objectives for the summit with Russia were described as: 1) obtaining an "ambitious and balanced package" on the road maps. The note stated that "the EU should insist that the road maps are adopted as a package in a way that maintains an overall coherent approach with regard to the four spaces. The EU should not compromise on key EU values and interests given that the road maps are likely to guide the development of EU/Russia relations for the new few years"; to reach a principled agreement on cooperation on common neighbourhood, "notably, in an effort to facilitate conflict solving in Moldova and Georgia"; 3) to reach an agreement on anti-terrorist measures that respect human rights and fundamental freedoms; 4) launch of regular consultation on human rights and fundamental rights questions.