EU wil banden aanhalen met gasrijk Turkemenistan (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission and the Czech EU presidency are turning the screw on the European Parliament to upgrade relations with Turkmenistan, despite question marks over the country's viability as an EU energy supplier.

"Unless the EU engages more now, including through the upgrading of contractual relations, we leave the field open to other actors in the region who care little about improving the human rights situation," external relations commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner i wrote on 26 January in a private letter to German left-wing MEP Helmuth Markov i.

"Taking such a step should not be seen as a 'reward' to Turkmenistan, but a pragmatic choice in our own interests."

The Czech EU presidency sent a similar letter to MEPs in recent days, voicing fears that Russia will entrench its monopoly on Turkmenistan gas exports, complicating EU plans to tap the country's resources with its own "Nabucco" pipeline.

Mr Markov chairs the European Parliament's trade committee, which has in the past made the signing of a basic trade deal with the post-Soviet dictatorship conditional on human rights benchmarks.

Parliament's position on the Interim Trade Agreement (ITA) will come up for a vote at the 9 March plenary. But despite Turkmenistan making no real progress on political reform, the conservative and socialist groups - which form a house majority - have already drafted a resolution clearing the ITA.

The parliament decision comes amid a charm offensive by the Czech Republic to enlist Nabucco suppliers in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine gas crisis.

Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek i will visit Ashgabat on 13 February. The Czech EU presidency hopes to bring the Turkmen foreign minister to a meeting in Brussels on 16 March if the ITA gets through. Turkmenistan leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov is also invited to a summit of Nabucco countries and the 27 EU leaders in Prague on 7 May.

The initiative risks staining the Czech Republic and the European Parliament's record as watchdogs of EU ethical foreign policy.

NGOs suspect that the pro-ITA line - that new legal relations will help the EU push for reform via formal human rights clauses - is a fig leaf for a simple gas grab.

"How does the commission substantiate its argument that the EU is better positioned to affect change in Turkmenistan by concluding an ITA, rather than requiring concrete rights improvements in advance of it?" Human Rights Watch analyst Veronika Szente Goldston said.

Beyond ethics

Beyond ethical questions, there are concerns that Turkmenistan will do little to improve EU energy security even if European energy firms sign big contracts with the regime in the context of a diplomatic rapprochement.

Turkmenistan is one of the most closed countries in the world. Ordinary people are forbidden to travel abroad. Even the Red Cross has no access to political prisoners and the fate of about 50 people who vanished after a failed coup in 2002 remains unclear.

MEPs have not visited for over two years. The European Commission has no staff in Ashgabat, beyond six sub-contracted workers at a cultural centre. And despite the presence of four EU member state embassies, Brussels does not know if a gun battle in Ashgabat last September was another attempt to overthrow the government.

NGO Global Witness says that under the late president Saparmurat Niyazov, all income from the gas trade was sneaked into off-budget funds held mainly in Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. There is no evidence the country's finances are any more normal today.

"It seems very short-sighted of the EU to think it can get around the Russia-Ukraine problem by turning to a country with virtually no standards of good governance," Global Witness' Tom Mayne said. "We could find ourselves feeding into a black hole of opacity and corruption."