Series:PISM Reports

Anti-corruption in Moldova and Ukraine: A V4 Handbook of Best Practices

Author(s): / Language(s): English

Corruption is the most oft-cited obstacle in relations between the EU and two of its eastern partners, Moldova and Ukraine. Seeping through public and private exchanges alike, systemic corruption impedes sectoral reforms—a crucial element of modernisation. The handbook offers concrete case studies from the Visegrad countries’ anti-corruption policy tracks and proposes solutions on how Moldova and Ukraine can best capitalise on the EU’s expertise, financial assistance and political momentum in anti-corruption reforms to minimise risk and optimise success.

Asserting the EU’s Mission in the Neighbourhood: Ten Recommendations for an Effective Eastern Partnership

Author(s): Kerry LONGHURST,Beata Wojna / Language(s): English

The authors consider that the EU needs to assert its role and mission in the Eastern neighbourhood with more vigour. To do this the Eastern Partnership needs to focus on the job of building up the rule of law and democracy in Eastern Europe. Though much has been achieved over the past two years, in terms of creating up the institutional framework for EaP, the reality is that democracy is back sliding in the region, corruption is endemic and social and economic catch-up of EaP countries towards EU levels is uncertain. Without fuller democratisation and promotion of the rule of law in the neighbourhood the implementation of EaP will be stunted.The Eastern Partnership holds the potential to do more but only if the EU develops a ‘democratic acquis’ replete with a precise reform agenda. Building up administrations and rooting out the sources and practices that perpetuate corruption should be a priority, twinned with a better capacity to support civil society and non-registered opposition groups and political parties, as envisaged in the European Endowment for Democracy. Negotiations on trade need to be accompanied by meaningful benefits and concessions that partner states can enjoy in the short and medium term if economies are to grow. Finally, to meet the expectations of those countries that value their European identities and where public support for the EU exists the effectiveness of EaP can be bolstered by stressing Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union. Emphasising a ‘European Perspective’ will remind partner states and EU members of the right that all European countries have to join the EU if they share EU values and fulfil economic and political membership criteria.

EU and Its Southern Neighbours: New Challenges for the European Neighbourhood Policy

Author(s): Beata Wojna / Language(s): English

The violent, unprecedented socio-political changes in North Africa and the Middle East—the stepping down of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, the anti-Qaddafi insurgency in Libya and people rallying for change in the other Arab states—prompt a revision of the EU’s approach to its southern neighbours. The present situation offers significant opportunities in this regard, even if the Arab transformations give rise to justified concerns about their further development and regional consequences.In the EU and its member states a debate is underway on the future of the EU’s policy towards the southern neighbours. The debate coincides with an across-the-board review of the European Neighbourhood Policy, the findings of which will be unveiled very soon by High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton. This report is an attempt at an answer to the political and financial dilemmas of the EU’s policy towards the southern neighbours. It puts forward recommendations on ways to support states in the region in their process of democratic transition, drawing also on the transition experiences of some member states. It also points to actions to be taken by the EU and its member states to maintain a balance between the southern and eastern dimensions of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

From Lisbon to Europe 2020. Lisbon Strategy Implementation in 2010: Assessments and Prospects

Author(s): Marcin Koczor,Paweł Tokarski / Language(s): English

Polish Institute of International Affairs published a report "From Lisbon to Europe 2020. Lisbon Strategy implementation in 2010: Assessments and Prospects" by Marcin Koczor and Paweł Tokarski. The publication contains the evaluation of the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy for 2010, a summary of the entire duration of the strategy and describes the place of the current EU economic strategy, Europe 2020, in the process of economic governance reform. The report also includes conclusions and recommendations for the current strategy – Europe 2020.

Indie w procesie reform: szanse dla Polski

Author(s): Patryk Kugiel / Language(s): Polish

Indie są dziś jednym ze wschodzących mocarstw, które będą wywierały rosnący wpływ na globalną gospodarkę i politykę. To siódmy największy kraj na świecie pod względem terytorium i drugi pod względem liczby mieszkańców (ponad 1,3 mld). To też siódma gospodarka w wartościach bezwzględnych i trzecia pod względem parytetu siły nabywczej (purchasing power parity, PPP). Z tempem wzrostu PKB powyżej 7% w 2016 r., rozwijała się najszybciej wśród państw G20, szybciej niż Chiny. To też potęga militarna, kraj mający broń jądrową, drugą największą armię i będący głównym na świecie importerem uzbrojenia. To w końcu największa ludnościowo demokracja świata.

Kierunek Iran! Stosunki polsko-irańskie i możliwości ich rozwoju

Author(s): Patrycja Sasnal,Kinga Brudzińska,Artur Gradziuk,Łukasz Kulesa,Damian Wnukowski / Language(s): Polish

Polska, podobnie jak inne państwa Unii Europejskiej i ta część społeczności międzynarodowej, która w ostatnich latach zmniejszyła intensywność kontaktów z Iranem z powodu jego programu atomowego, poszukuje dziś możliwości odbudowania stosunków. Obie strony – irańska i europejska – przejawiają zainteresowanie maksymalnym ich polepszeniem w możliwie najkrótszym czasie, póki istnieje w Europie i USA konsensus, że z Iranem należy rozmawiać. Szybkość powrotu Iranu do grona akceptowanych partnerów międzynarodowych, przede wszystkim jako atrakcyjnego partnera handlowego, świadczy o naturalnej predyspozycji globalnego systemu gospodarczego do wykorzystywania pojawiających się nisz. Zapowiada także trudności z utrzymaniem tak istotnego podmiotu poza systemem ekonomiczno-politycznym w erze zglobalizowanych stosunków międzynarodowych.

Learning from Past Experiences: Ways to Improve EU Aid on Reforms in the Eastern Partnership

Author(s): Elżbieta Kaca,Anita Sobják,Konrad Zasztowt / Language(s): English

The EU aid approach in the Eastern Partnership countries is to financially support concrete reforms: sector budget support operations are most commonly used. The pace of fulfilment of conditions differs much among the partners. This results mainly from the various levels of willingness of the EaP governments to conduct EU-oriented reforms. Therefore, one can distinguish two groups of countries, EU-oriented (Moldova, Georgia) and non-EU-oriented (Armenia, Azerbaijan), where the latter are interested only in selective sector cooperation. The status of Ukraine is still unclear due to the recent political crisis: a pro-EU government is in place but the country will soon face presidential elections and is generally under increasing pressure from Russia. Still, in analysing recent years under the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, the country was not committed to EU integration in real terms. A comparative picture of budget-support use in five Eastern Partnership countries shows numerous similarities. The initial experiences prove that it helps with legal approximation to EU standards in various sectors. This makes budget support, based on conditions and results, a more efficient tool in guiding some sector reforms than purely advisory instruments. For EUoriented countries, budget support is a suitable tool to guide the reforms needed to follow the association agenda. For non-EU-oriented countries, budget support cannot be an instrument that will encourage the government to start comprehensive reforms, but can be used as partial support in some sector cooperation. In that case, it has a fundamental advantage of obliging the government to work closely with the EU, going to the substance of the reform, and change, at least partially, the situation. In order to make budget support a more effective tool, several challenges common to the EaP countries must be addressed. The biggest problem with this approach appears to be that budget-support operations enhance legislative changes while failing to address the implementation side of reform, that is the government measures and actions aimed at the introduction of relevant policy instruments, procedures, and institutional interactions in order to achieve the planned reform. The reasons for this, besides political unwillingness, are as follows. First, the engagement of relevant ministries in implementation is lower than it could be as the funds are directed to the state budget and not to them directly. Second, the conditions applied to the aid sometimes are not shaped properly (they are too broad, ambitious or numerous). To some extent, this is derived from the limited capacities of national administrations to draft conditions and the inexperience of both sides in their first operations together. The programming period lacks wide consultations with stakeholders, other than the government, to discuss if the selected conditions are the most relevant. In addition, budget support is highly inflexible in terms of changing indicators once the financial agreement is signed, which risks outdated conditions. In some cases, the EU side is mainly to blame, as it avoids calculations of the overall costs of reforms and linking concrete activities with money as it fears the aid it provides would be treated as insufficient by the beneficiary.

Membership in the Reforming Euro Area: A Central-Eastern European Perspective

Author(s): Agata Gostyńska,Paweł Tokarski,Patryk Toporowski,Damian Wnukowski / Language(s): English

On 25th June 2013, the closed-door scientific workshop “Membership in the Reforming Euro Area: The CEE Perspective” took place at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. It was the first event organised as part of the Rastanews project (“Macro-Risk Assessment and Stabilisation Policies with New Early Warning Signals”) The aim of the workshop was to initiate a discussion on the project and to provide some food for thought on the work in the upcoming months centred on the particular deliverables of Work Package 6 of the project. This report intends to summarise the objectives set up there and along with the recommendations it offers to contribute to the overall efforts to provide a framework for a revised EMU necessary to achieve EU stability and regain credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. Over the course of the workshop, serious discrepancies in the macroeconomic potential of the EU Member States and an insufficient level of economic convergence were identified. This incongruence is clearly reflected in these economies’ competitiveness and reflected in their current account balances. Therefore, the current crisis should be called rather a “balance of payments crisis” than a crisis of the euro currency.

New European Diasporas and Migration Governance: Poles in Norway

Author(s): Jakub M. Godzimirski,Marta Stormowska,Kinga Dudzińska / Language(s): English

The EU has usually considered immigration policy for third country nationals and the free movement framework for EU citizens to be two separate policy fields. Increasingly, they are being conflated. This places a country such as Poland in an ambivalent position. When it comes to the treatment of third country nationals, Central and Eastern European member governments—including that in Warsaw—are reluctant to agree on fixed quotas to relocate forced migrants from the south, fearing that this could strain their limited resources and entail heavy political costs. When it comes to free movement, by contrast, Poland and other sending countries of the region are having to defend the status of their own citizens residing in Western Europe and call on support and solidarity there. This report examines how this may affect the specific situation of the Polish migrant community in Norway. Poland can draw lessons from Norway, which has only recently made the transition to becoming a country of immigration.

Non-military aspects of security in V4 countries—prospects for co-operation

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The Polish Institute of International Affairs has published the third issue of the “V4 Papers” titled “Non-military aspects of security in V4 countries—prospects for co-operation”. The volume edited by Dr Kacper Rękawek of the Polish Institute of International Affairs analyses past experiences and prospects for V4 cooperation while combatting non-military threats like international terrorism and organised crime to the region.The publication is a part of a project "Creating a Sphere of Security in Wider Central Europe: Sharing V4 Know-how in Cooperation on Security with the Neighbouring Regions" supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

North–South Gas Corridor: Geopolitical Breakthrough in Central Europe

Author(s): / Language(s): English

Despite delays, a lack of short-term results, as well as turbulent domestic political agendas, the North–South Gas Corridor (NSGC or NSI) remains a priority for all of the Central European states. There are significant differences among them in terms of the level of market liberalisation, progress in building physical infrastructure, and with short-term priorities; however, first and foremost in common is a deep need to diversify both gas supply routes and suppliers. The goal is to achieve this using the same tools in each country—the development of new infrastructure, especially new interconnectors and underground gas storage facilities, contractual and trade arrangements (the introduction of physical and virtual reverse flows), market liberalisation, and the promotion of competition, spot markers and contracts with alternative gas suppliers. The V4 governments and regulators should be expected to continue coordination of efforts amongst themselves on a common regulatory framework for unified wholesaler trading zones, in parallel with the EU Single Market process (an integrated entry/exit network, a single virtual trading point, mergers of trading zones, etc.). In the long run, regional market liquidity might be increased through the establishment of a common gas trading hub, possibly at the future LNG terminal in Świnoujście, Poland. This could strengthen the hand of all of the purchasing countries from the region vis-á-vis their traditional suppliers, namely Russia and Norway.

Nowe diaspory w Europie i zarządzanie migracją: przypadek Polaków w Norwegii

Author(s): Jakub M. Godzimirski,Marta Stormowska,Kinga Dudzińska / Language(s): Polish

Unia Europejska traktuje politykę imigracyjną (w odniesieniu do obywateli państw trzecich) oraz zasadę swobodnego przepływu osób jako odrębne kwestie. W coraz większym stopniu jednak łączą się one ze sobą, co stawia kraje takie jak Polska w sytuacji ambiwalentnej, tym bardziej że władze państw Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej – w tym rząd w Warszawie – nieprzychylnie reagują na ustalane kwoty relokowanych uchodźców, obawiając się przy tym napływu migrantów ekonomicznych. Przewidują bowiem, że może doprowadzić to do nadwyrężenia ich ograniczonych zasobów i generować duże koszty polityczne. Jednocześnie w kwestii swobodnego przepływu osób, Polska i inne tzw. państwa wysyłające bronią pozycji własnych obywateli zamieszkujących w innych krajach unijnych, głównie Europy Zachodniej, oczekują też wsparcia i solidarności ze strony tzw. państw przyjmujących. Celem raportu jest analiza bieżących procesów i ich wpływu na sytuację społeczności polskiej w Norwegii oraz przedstawienie wniosków, jakie Polska może wyciągnąć z doświadczeń kraju, który sam stał się docelowy dla dużych grup migrantów.

Path to Prosperity or Road to Ruin? Shale Gas Under Political Scrutiny

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The report seeks to explore the reasons behind the stark polarization of the European debate about shale gas. Supporters of exploration and production from shale gas deposits consider it an opportunity to significantly alter the political and economic rules affecting Europe’s energy security. Critics tend to interpret the development of the shale gas industry as a threat to the environment, a challenge to the existing strategies of limiting the green-house gas emissions, or a competition to the well-entrenched economic interests.Thus the report analyzes the politics of shale gas, looking into debates in the select European countries and probing the activities of the EU institutions (the EU Council, the Commission, the European Parliament) in this sphere. The authors investigated a broad array of factors that influence the preferences of the key players: approach to the optimal energy mix, desired level of diversification of energy supplies, or the perception of natural gas imports from an energy security angle. In addition, the report highlights the significance of the North American experience with shale gas exploration and development as a crucial determinant of the European debate.

PISM Report on the Common Security and Defence Policy

Author(s): / Language(s): English

Rebalancing the Fiscal Framework in the European Union: Perspectives of Germany, France and Poland

Author(s): Sebastian Płóciennik / Language(s): English

The economic crisis that began a decade ago has given impulse to economic governance reforms in the European Union. The most intense changes were in the fiscal sphere, i.e., the rules defining Member State leeway in budgetary planning, with a focus on tightening up the financial discipline and seeing to it that Member States, and especially euro area members, do not go beyond the caps imposed on the government deficit and debt. The changes were by no means uncontroversial. As claimed by proponents, they led governments to begin taking a serious approach to the stability of public finances—a foundation for healthy economic growth—and bore fruit in the form of a European economic recovery starting from 2014. No significant overhaul is needed since the applied mechanisms have just started to work. Critics, on the other hand, argue that the restrictive rules have had the effect of prolonging the economic crisis, aggravating the debt situation and sharpening social problems, thus triggering the rise of populist and anti-European movements. The criticism goes further than that. The present fiscal framework, with its emphasis on discipline, makes it more difficult to pursue a coherent countercyclical policy in the euro area. In its current form, it cannot be coordinated with the monetary policy of the European Central Bank. Many also argue that the present fiscal framework has “technical” faults, too many criteria, is complicated, hard to project, and subject to overpoliticised supervision, all of which affects the effectiveness and credibility of the whole system.

The EU Gas Game: Time to Redefine the Rules? Case Studies of Russia and Norway and Lessons for the EU, Norway and Poland

Author(s): Aleksandra Gawlikowska-Fyk,Zuzanna Nowak,Lidia Puka / Language(s): English

The EU’s heavy reliance on imports of energy resources leaves it vulnerable to external suppliers and comes at an economic and political cost. Among the EU’s energy imports its governance vulnerability is especially visible in the gas sector. This is because pipeline infrastructure, longterm contracts, price formulas and an underdeveloped European market weaken the EU’s hand in bargaining with its major gas suppliers, principally Russia and Norway. Norwegian and Russian gas constitutes 80% of all gas imports to the EU. The European Union does have one considerable lever in dealing with Norway and Russia: it is a very attractive market for both countries. This gives the EU some scope to set the rules of the game in terms of gas. The EU assumes the establishment of a fully-fledged European internal market, as well as implementing competition law and exporting market regulations beyond its borders in a bid to reduce prices and depoliticise gas imports, but that raises a question about whether the EU is neglecting other tools available to the EU, such as brute political or financial levers. Indeed the lack of political cohesion among the Member States remains the EU’s Achilles’ heel and its financial capacity is insufficient to force the market to integrate.

The European Union Presidency

Author(s): Leszek Jesień / Language(s): English

It is assumed here that the presidency concept in the European Union—in its political and managerial aspects—has been transformed over the years into a specific, institutionalized procedure of EU politics and policy-making. That means EU member states have established the presidency as a means for their cooperation, although it was initially somewhat less institutionalized. Its objective is a search for legitimacy in decision-making; hence the ways and means of making decisions that find support from all. The procedure is effectively a living set of specific rules of behaviour that are known to all the actors involved.

The Future of NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture: Views from Central Europe

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The Polish Institute of International Affairs is pleased to present the report The Future of NATO’s Deterrence and Defence Posture: Views from Central Europe, published as part of a partnership with the Nuclear Security Project. The report includes contributions of experts from Central Europe and the United States, it was edited by Łukasz Kulesa, head of the Non-proliferation and Arms Control Project at PISM. The year 2012 saw the completion of the Deterrence and Defence Posture Review (DDPR), which was mandated by the 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon. This process involved a comprehensive re-examination of the utility of the main elements of NATO’s posture: nuclear weapons, missile defence capabilities and conventional forces, as well as arms-control and disarmament issues. Using the DDPR as the point of departure, the report is meant to provide an analytical glimpse into the future—the next decade of the functioning of NATO’s deterrence posture, as seen from Central Europe. It concentrates on the regional perceptions of the security environment and threats, the assessments of the credibility of NATO’s policy, and the way forward. Taken into account the perspective of a turbulent decade in which the viability of NATO’s defence and deterrence posture will be subjected to external and internal pressures, understanding the concerns and viewpoints of Central Europeans would help in charting the right course for the Alliance.

Visegrad Cooperation within NATO and CSDP

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The Polish Institute of International Affairs has published the second issue of the “V4 Papers” titled “Visegrad Cooperation within NATO and CSDP”. The volume edited by Dr Csaba Törő of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs analyzes past experiences and prospects for V4 cooperation within NATO and the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy. It also encompasses Baltic and Ukrainian perspectives on security and defense issues. The publication is a part of a project "Creating a Sphere of Security in Wider Central Europe: Sharing V4 Know-how in Cooperation on Security with the Neighbouring Regions" supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

Weimar Defence Cooperation – Projects to Respond to the European Imperative

Author(s): Marcel Dickow,Hilmar Linnekamp,Jean-Pierre Maulny,Marcin Terlikowski / Language(s): English

On 4 November 2011 a Report “Weimar Defence Cooperation – Projects to Respond to the European Imperative” was presented in Berlin. The paper was prepared by an international team of experts from the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) and the Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques (IRIS) in a framework of a research project kindly supported by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.