Strategische Partnerschaft zwischen der Europäischen Union und der Russischen Föderation im Wandel von Normativität zu Pragmatismus

摘要

The Strategic Partnership between the European Union and Russian Federation exists officially since the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) was ratified in 1997. In fact, it has been established much earlier: the Agreement was signed in 1994, and the negotiations begun even earlier, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and as soon as the new democratic state Russian Federation came onto the international stage as its successor. The fact that the ratification of the agreement took the whole three years shows that the partnership from the very beginning was far from harmonious. While the agreement proclaimed Russia and the EU to be strategic partners sharing common democratic values, Russia started the first military action in Chechnya in 1993. The military operation was massively criticized by the European Parliament as the violation of human rights which was not compatible with the key issue of the Agreement and the ratification of the PCA had to be postponed. On the other side, even back then there were strong links between the European and Russian economics and the market interest didn't allow the partners to drift apart. In this way the discrepancy between the normative claims of a strategic partnership on paper and the political reality ruled by economic interests emerged at the early stage in the relationship between the EU and Russia. As the relationship developed the controversial duality of interests and values turned out to be a massive problem in the partnership. Especially in contrast to the vivid economic cooperation and the fast rapprochement of the societies the political dialogue seems to be the problematic area. It is burdened with critics and accusation on both sides. The European authorities criticize Russia for its turn to more authoritarian rules and lacking willingness to implement normative claims of the Agreement, while Russian government rejects increasingly annoyed all the critics as disrespectful intrusion in national affairs which is inappropriate for a country with the regional power status. The political dialogue has to deal not only with objective areas of controversial interests in pragmatic issues, but also with the normative conflict. Therefore, the initial assumption of the present thesis is: the partnership EU-Russia underwent a significant transformation in the period between 1991 and 2007 and its character has changed. The balance between the normative and the pragmatic components of the relationship - which is always a complicated balancing act for every powerful actor - has shifted from stressing common values towards more rational and aggressive pursuit of interests. The empirical analysis made in this dissertation shows that the proclaimed normative character of the partnership doesn't reflect the reality anymore. Moreover, there is no common basis of normative values and aims in the partnership, as the European and Russian norms are different due to their different historical terms, traditions and development. These objective discrepancies lead to the normative gap which is often misused politically by authorities on both sides to camouflage some particular interests and, besides, is loaded with emotional content. The conflict of values grew into a big “psychological” issue in the partnership. In order to prevent this conflict to interfere with the good average relations and not to block the economic cooperation, the normative topics were blanked out from the agenda and the partnership tended to be more a pragmatic collaboration than a strategic partnership with a strong normative basis. In few words, this is the quintessence of the character shift in the partnership EU-Russia. As for the methodology of this work, the transformation process is analysed multidimensional and from the European and Russian perspectives both. The research is made parallel on two levels. On the empirical level this is the case study where the partnership between two major players on the european continent is analysed in its development since 1991 with the focus on the transformation between normative and pragmatic. On the theoretical level the examination of the political concepts of interest and value takes place simultaneously and results in the clear statement of how the normativity and pragmatism are both constructive elements of foreign affairs of each state and – as they are mostly controversial - have to balance each other. This provides clear theoretical framework for the case study. Thus makes the present dissertation innovative – the concrete case study, analysed empirically, is substantiated by the theoretical study of the central abstract controversy in the theory of foreign politics – norms and interests - which allows to make broader result statement about the current pragmatic tendency in the field of international politics.