EU en Rusland versterken relatie door nieuw noordelijk verdrag (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The new trend of ever closer EU-Russia relations is set to see a northern thrust with the upcoming agreement on a permanent new treaty setting out EU, Russia, Norway and Iceland's joint strategic goals for the Barents and Baltic seas.

Talks on the text of the new Northern Dimension pact are on track to be completed on 22 September with a signing ceremony tabled for the EU-Russia summit in Helsinki on 24 November at either the foreign minister or head of state level.

The multilateral pact will cover similar areas as the new bilateral EU-Russia "Strategic Partnership Treaty (SPT)" also currently under discussion, but with the northern text focusing on oil and gas exploration, protection of fish stocks and the welfare of indigenous people.

The northern treaty will be "less political" than the SPT, EU officials say, avoiding thorny issues such as long-term arrangements for Russian passengers and military equipment transiting through Lithuania to the Russian EU enclave of Kaliningrad.

But some of the issues on the table, such as environment and health, have a political dimension as Russia's old nuclear submarine fleet rotting away in the Kola peninsula and with EU neighbours worried about abnormally high tuberculosis and HIV levels in Kaliningrad.

The new pact might even include a framework for resolving a 35-year old territorial dispute between Norway and Russia over an oil-rich 173,000 square kilometre section of the Barents Sea, a contact close to the talks told EUobserver.

New chapter

The Northern Dimension multilateral structure was born in June 2000 with the adoption of the EU's first three-year "action plan" for the region and with a follow-up plan put in place in 2003.

But the new treaty currently under discussion will be a permanent agreement drawn up with the full participation of Russia and the two Nordic states that can only be amended by consensus in the same way as the EU treaty.

"It's now defined as a common policy, not an EU policy, or an EU, Norway and Iceland policy," an EU official stated.

He added that Russian participation in the Northern Dimension structure had sunk to "depressingly low" levels by 2004 but saw a "turnaround" after Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov turned up to a Northern Dimension meeting in Brussels in late 2005.

Mistrust

Several post-Soviet new EU member states, such as Poland and Lithuania, are deeply mistrustful of Russia which controls some 25 percent of the EU's oil and gas consumption.

Polish analysts see the planned Russian-German Baltic Sea gas pipeline as a Russian political manouevre designed to undermine Poland's influence as an EU gas-transit state and sow discord in the 25-member bloc.

But Finland, which holds the current EU presidency, and Germany, which will lead the EU in the first half of 2007, have both made closer Russian relations a priority for the EU in line with the cozy atmosphere and warm words traded at the G8 summit in St Petersburg in June.

Putin coming to dinner

Helsinki has taken the unusual step of inviting Russian president Vladimir Putin to dinner at an informal EU summit to be held in Lahti, Finland on 21 October.

German energy giants such as E.ON and Ruhrgas are spearheading EU investment into Russia's state-dominated energy sector and Berlin's foreign ministry has drafted a new "eastern policy" paper for the EU in 2007 with a strong pro-Russian slant.

The EU's eastern policy should be designed to "make the political, economic and cultural ties between the EU and Russia - its anchor in a wider Europe - irreversible" the draft paper will propose, German media revealed this week.