The European Political Neighborhood (EPC) is now a reality. A summit in Prague on October 6, attended by leaders from some 44 international locations, inaugurated the pan-European membership. Initially proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in a speech earlier than the European Parliament, the EPC contains the European Union’s 27 members in addition to its neighbours: from Ukraine to Azerbaijan and from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Georgia.
Considerably, the discussion board additionally contains the UK and Turkey, two principal actors in “wider Europe”, that are each exterior the EU. Prime Minister Liz Truss and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan each made an look in Prague.
With such a lineup, Macron had good causes to really feel content material. A brand new organisation was born to care for safety and stability in Europe and France is within the driving seat. The Elysee thinks it has a imaginative and prescient and a plan. From the French perspective, the EPC kills two birds with one stone.
On the one hand, it attracts neighbours into the EU’s orbit – even laborious circumstances, akin to post-Brexit Britain and Turkey, which is at loggerheads with plenty of the Union’s member states, together with France. Greater than that, the EPC embraces war-torn Ukraine and different EU membership hopefuls within the post-Soviet area, akin to Moldova and Georgia.
However, it’s a broad and unfastened association, because the EPC leaves sufficient room for integration to speed up inside the EU, and particularly its core shaped by the eurozone.
COVID-19 led to extra fiscal solidarity within the type of joint borrowing. Paris is championing additional deepening of frequent establishments and coverage, particularly if it occurs beneath its management. All of it provides to the coveted aim of “strategic autonomy”, the concept “Europe” (that’s, the EU) ought to spend money on inner cohesion and in addition try to behave independently in worldwide affairs at a time when US-China bipolarity is taking form.
The large query is whether or not the EPC works for the international locations on the EU’s exterior. Do they see added worth in it or, on the contrary, settle for to play an element with a view to indulge the EU and/or France? The reply varies in line with the place you sit on the map.
For Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, the EPC is a welcome growth. It anchors them much more robustly within the EU-centred regional order and reinforces the pre-existent net of treaties and institutional templates that hyperlink them with the 27-strong membership. In June, the European Council granted Kyiv and Chisinau candidate standing.
Now the EPC attracts a symbolic but clear-cut boundary between them and Russia which is utilizing any means attainable, together with battle, to rebuild its empire. So Macron’s brainchild actually counts for one thing within the East.
Issues are rather more ambiguous within the Western Balkans which have been caught for almost 20 years within the EU’s ready room. The French president has tried to reassure Balkan international locations that membership within the EPC is not going to hurt their accession path. The truth that the Czech Republic, which is holding the presidency of the EU Council in the meanwhile, hosted the inaugural assembly was meant to ship a powerful sign in that respect.
Western Balkan leaders politely agree. Privately, nonetheless, they’re something however enthusiastic about what may grow to be a speaking store, just like the Group for Safety and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), at finest, and a diversion away from the EU, at worst.
The stakes are excessive for Turkey and the UK as nicely. For these two, the EPC is a political alternative to re-establish themselves in Europe and affect regional affairs. We got a style of what could possibly be in retailer, when in Prague, Erdogan discovered himself sitting in a foyer along with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev.
Flanked by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, the Turkish president seemed to be mediating between the 2 Southern Caucasus states, a task habitually reserved for Russia.
Truss, for her half, used the Prague gathering to reset relations with Macron, committing to carry a UK-France summit subsequent yr and discussing issues of the day, together with the continued vitality disaster affecting each international locations. In the long run, the EPC may present the idea for a step-by-step convergence on coverage between London and the EU.
But, the EPC could battle to fulfil the function of a catalyst for nearer and extra cooperative relations with Turkey and the UK. The EU’s relations with each Ankara and London stay strained.
Turkey’s squabbles with EU members Greece and Cyprus within the Jap Mediterranean will not be getting resolved anytime quickly and, in truth, could change into worse as Greek and Turkish elections scheduled for the summer time of 2023 strategy.
The UK and the EU are giving no indication they’re going to overcome the deadlock over the contents of the Northern Eire Protocol which London desires to revise with a view to eradicate the customs border within the Irish Sea which now separates Ulster from the remainder of the nation. It will most likely take a Labour authorities to place relations on a sounder foundation, which might little doubt make stronger the EPC, too.
The latest historical past of French diplomacy in Europe provides many examples when lofty visions have crashed into the rocks of harsh political realities. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Union for the Mediterranean misplaced momentum quickly after its launch in 2008. President Francois Mitterrand’s “European Confederation”, an EPC predecessor of types, remained on the drafting board within the early Nineteen Nineties.
This new initiative may fare higher, driving on the tailwinds of the battle in Ukraine. But it’s too quickly to inform if it could make a giant distinction in European politics.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.