Recalibrating EU Foreign Policy vis-à-vis Central Asia: Towards Principled Pragmatism and Resilience

Remy Maduit | Authors published

Recalibrating EU Foreign Policy vis-à-vis Central Asia:
Towards Principled Pragmatism and Resilience

Neil Winn is a Senior Lecturer in European Studies at the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Leeds, UK.
Stefan Gänzle is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.

Throughout history, Central Asia—comprising Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan — has been an important crossroads connecting Europe and Asia in terms of energy, trade, and infrastructure. Yet, neither regional nor external powers paid much attention to the region in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, which afforded the aforementioned states their independence. Over the past decade, however, Central Asia has gradually moved to the center stage of contemporary Eurasian geopolitics. The hasty retreat of the United States (US) and its Atlantic Alliance partners from neighboring Afghanistan in the late summer of 2021 is likely to exacerbate this geopolitical pivot to Central Asia.

Russia has already acted as a security guarantor for Central Asian states via the Collective Shanghai Treaty Organization (SCO) and maintains a strong military presence in the region. The Eurasian Economic Union (EUEA) which comprises most of the Central Asian countries, further contributes to consolidating Russian hegemony in the region, which is also underwritten in cultural terms through the memory of a collective Soviet past and the dissemination of the Russian language. China views Central Asia as an important cornerstone of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which unites economic and geopolitical ambitions. Finally, the European Union (EU) has shown interest in engaging with the “neighbors of its neighbors” [1], thus putting Central Asia at least implicitly into the fold of its wider European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). [2] In Central Asia, ENP countries such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia were intended to function as vehicles for EU-spurred norms and policy diffusion. We premise this on the idea that EU norms and values could “travel” across the ENP sphere to lock in on a path towards Europe, even those countries and regions, which lie well outside the EU’s immediate vicinity.

However, considering the ongoing Western crisis and rising Chinese and Russian assertiveness in the region, the EU has carefully revised its foreign policy approach. Towards this background, the EU devised a new strategy for Central Asia in 2017, which was finally published in 2019. [3] This regional strategy which replaced the one endorsed in 2007 is amongst the first to function under the umbrella of the EU’s global approach expressed in the Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (EUGS) of 2016. [4]

In this article, we analyze how the EU’s foreign policy towards Central Asia has changed with the revised strategy of 2019 by drawing comparisons to the original strategy from 2007 and putting it in context with the EUGS. Going beyond this specific foreign policy area, this article seeks to contribute to a new understanding of EU external governance. In a nutshell, we argue that EU foreign policy has shifted its focus from democracy promotion in Central Asia to principled pragmatism and resilience. This is guided by changes in EU global strategy away from the perimeters of the external governance paradigm towards recognizing geopolitics as being important if the not decisive determinant of EU foreign policy in the 21st century. Democracy promotion is still important in this prescription. [5] But this new pragmatism corresponds with the EU recognizing its role as a secondary player in the region behind other powers such as Russia, China, and the United States.

Our paper proceeds as follows: The next section first briefly reviews the core tenets of external governance literature in EU foreign policy before assessing the EU’s engagement in the region and how it relates to the two other key actors, Russia and China. Then, the analysis sets out the relationship between the EU and Central Asia from the perspective of the exercise of “principled pragmatism” and resilience in EU foreign policy and how this is received in Central Asia. Finally, the paper concludes with comments on EU norms and material interests in Central Asia.

EU Foreign Policy and External Governance: Recalibrating from Brussels-Centric Policy to Local Resilience

We have used the concept of external governance as an analytical tool for assessing the processes of EU foreign policymaking from “a more institutional, structural view”. [6] It, thus, stands in sharp contrast to more actor-based approaches to EU external relations, rooted in traditional foreign policy analysis. According to Lavenex, EU external governance occurs “when parts of the acquis communautaire are extended to non-members” [7] without the (immediate) prospect of membership, thus focusing on “institutional processes of norm diffusion and policy transfer”. [8] However, external governance and the ability of the EU to Europeanise extra-EU territories in Europe’s vicinity have real empirical limitations. [9] According to Schimmelfennig “EU market power and supranational regulation are the most important factors in making non-member states adopt the modes and rules of EU governance, because of direct conditionality or through indirect externalization”. [10] Where the EU does not have such a regularised [relationship with an external state, the Union’s ability to Europeanise the state from the outside is considerably lessened.

Studies of EU external governance have become a hallmark of contemporary EU foreign policy analyses operating in a continuum between accession-driven modes of governance—involving hierarchical (EU-spurred) leadership on one side and network- and market-based (non-hierarchical) modes of steering on the other. Many analyses of EU enlargement processes have used the template of EU external governance to understand the conditions and impact of the EU’s extension of its regulatory, transactional, and—ultimately—institutional boundaries to encompass new members. Because of significant (geo-) political and in some areas also geographical hurdles to expanding EU membership, the traditional enlargement approach has become a less effective tool for hierarchical EU steering in external affairs. The EU external governance approach has, thus, been recalibrated towards encompassing local resilience, emphasizing regional politics and the need for local internal capacity to deal with emerging problems. The study of external governance has started to “consider that there is over one institutional solution to EU-third country relations”. [11] In the past, they have framed some of these alternatives as strategic or privileged partnerships. However, external governance approaches have maintained not only a strong sectoral bias but also tend to de-contextualize the bilateral relationship involving the EU and the target country from its broader geopolitical environment. Even studies of EU enlargement have systematically excluded the geopolitical context from the analysis. This may be because geopolitical contenders in Central and Eastern Europe for most of the 1990s and early 2000s—such as Russia and China — were not necessarily viewed as such and have not come to play a prominent role. Russia forged its concept of the “near abroad” early in the 1990s, but never mustered enough power to sustain the idea politically in the post-Soviet space. However, this changed after Russia militarily engaged in Georgia in 2008 and, later, Ukraine in 2014. Similarly, it was only in the early 2010s when China’s ascent to the world stage significantly gained momentum under President Xi Jinping’s more assertive leadership, reflected in decidedly geopolitical initiatives such as the BRI.

Concerning Central Asia, the EU’s capacity to exert external governance is impeded by geographical and political distance. Sharing borders, historical ties, and language, Russian and Chinese geopolitics have a helpful starting point. Russia is the key regional power in Central Asia and its influence is predicated on the Eurasian Economic Union and historically close political ties. China’s influence is mainly through its aid, trade, and development regimes with Central Asian states. [12] Within Central Asia, the states of the region are diverse and often take their lead from Russia in defining their political and security regimes. [13] The growth of hydrocarbons in the geopolitics of Russian foreign policy has impacted the region. New geopolitical alliances around renewable energy sources have more recently been forged between Kazakhstan and Russia [14], which have been reinforced by the Russian intervention in Kazakhstan in January 2022. [15] Kyrgyzstan is a member state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and has links with China and Russia. Recent political turmoil in the country has placed EU initiatives in education, sustainable development, and youth in context and highlights that the EU is doing valuable work in the social and economic sphere. [16] Despite recent reforms, Kazakhstan is dominated by authoritarian politics[17]; it has found markets for its energy in China and Russia, which remains its key interlocutor, but the EU has held less sway in the country. Tajikistan is also an authoritarian state that is oriented toward Russia in the main. Beyond a few infrastructure programs, EU policy toward the country has been at arm’s length. [18]

Still, the EU sees it [self as an exporter of its definitions of the rule of law, human rights, and labor standards that are inherent in its foundational laws and practices. [19] While the idea of normative power EU has been successful in and immediately around the Union, the geographical remoteness of Central Asia has led the EU not to pursue its normative policies with vigor [20], but adopt pragmatic policies predicated on economic and geopolitical interests. In consequence, EU policies for the region lack focus and have remained reactive. [21] Indeed, the “ambiguity backstopping such strategic attitudes has urged some to suggest that the EU’s preoccupation with its normative power is merely a distraction from the confrontation with” a resulting European provincial station in international politics. [22] The EU’s half-hearted interactions with Central Asia confirm it is not a player in the region, leaving the field to Chinese and Russian geopolitics. Perhaps, their Hobbesian approaches chime better with the authoritarian leaders of Central Asian states than the EU’s rule-based conditionalities with strings attached. [23] Central Asian states’ transactional costs of dealing with China are, therefore, comparably lighter, as are the levels of regulation and transparency in decision-making. Thus, perhaps the EU has neither the will nor the ability to challenge Chinese economic hegemony in Central Asia. Indeed:

The very conspicuous failure to link the EU’s demands for reform in Central Asian states to any meaningful dynamic for Europeanization shows the EU is far short of conceptualizing (let alone validating) the role of its normative power both in the region and […] “out-of-Europe” areas. [24]

This is partly because of different EU member state interests in Central Asia and how different EU member states interact with Chinese policy in the region. 17 states from Central Eastern and South-Eastern Europe have been engaged in a multilateral framework for cooperation with China since 2012, “which has shown significant potential for generating a strong pro-China lobby within the EU”. [25] Pacheco Pardo highlights that certain EU member states’ reliance on Beijing’s ‘17 + 1’ cooperation framework undermines the prospects for EU external governance in Central Asia. [26] However, this framework has not been very productive and was weakened by Lithuania’s exit in 2021. [27]

In contradistinction to Pacheco Pardo, the corollary of the argument is that EU foreign policy in Central Asia is driven as much by financial policy as it is by norms/values. Pacheco Pardo’s analysis presents the EU as the victim of its normative power, but this is not necessarily the case. This is used to justify the argument that China (especially) and Russia have greater economic interests and are, by extension, more effective/influential policy actors in Central Asia. This is not always the case, as we have identified multiple EU programs drawn from different fields in Central Asia, which highlight a deeper engagement than the literature might always highlight. The argument in Pacheco Pardo also assumes that the EU’s engagement in Central Asia is based on norms only. As we show below, EU Central Asia policy is increasingly predicated on new realist pragmatism/interests following on from the EUGS 2016 and the EU Central Asia Strategy 2019. The Europeanisation literature would expect that some EU member states ‘upload’ their own (pragmatic) foreign policy preferences onto the EU’s agenda [28], whereas others work through the EU to achieve a multilateral policy. These basic choices are formulated according to ‘the perceived salience of the policy goals, the extent to which member states can carve out a niche, their perceived capabilities, and the level of the Europeanization of their national foreign policies’. [29]

The EU’s engagement in Central Asia is arguably not driven by power politics in Russia and China. Instead, it acts as an “honest broker” in the region predicated on pragmatism; a second-order actor in the region actor that is not wholeheartedly engaged in the regional geopolitics of “neighbors of neighbors”. [30] The EU seeks to balance its and other great powers’ security interests in Central Asia with its internal values by projecting those values externally. [31] The EU is relatively influential in security governance in the region but is not fully engaged in setting the geopolitical terms of the Central Asian regional security complex, which is mainly defined by Russia, China, and the states of Central Asia. [32] There are limits to EU external governance to influence developments in Central Asia [33], and the Union only has a secondary role in the region. In a more general sense, the EU is trying to gain an economic advantage in Central Asia by increasing economic and political ties in the region. But EU efforts fall behind the Chinese Belt and Road initiative and the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, which are the new Great Games in Central Asia. [34]

Indeed, the EU has not launched its BRI but is deeply engaged in Central Asia, especially in connectivity. Connectivity is the “physical and non-physical infrastructure through which goods, services, ideas, and people can flow unhindered”. [35] Such links have moved apace since the passage of the EU Central Asia Strategy of 2007. Indeed, “Transport and energy links were already identified as a priority in the EU’s 2007 Central Asia strategy”. [36] Developments have been slow in implementing the “Caspian-Black Sea pipeline, creating an ‘e-silk highway’ or integrating Central Asian energy markets”. [37] Interestingly, China has been seen in the media to be more successful in implementing connectivity projects in Central Asia. Indeed, ‘China’s big-ticket projects such as a 19-kilometer railway tunnel in Uzbekistan and the Khorgos logistics hub have captured more media attention, creating the impression that Beijing has sidelined the EU as a Central Asian connectivity player’. [38] In September 2018, the EU published its connecting Europe and Asia strategy. [39] The EU’s internal market inspires it as a model to promote regional integration in other parts of the world. Rather than striving to replace the BRI, the strategy recognizes that “non-engagement is not an option for the EU, given Beijing’s growing influence in Central Asia”. [40] Linked to the above comments on connectivity, the EU launched its Global Gateway plan in late 2021 to rival the Chinese BRI in terms of trade and infrastructure investment globally. [41] The Global Gateway plan shows EU’s ambition and pragmatism globally to project its values and interests, but it is still in the planning stage and will lag behind the BRI for some time to come, particularly in Central Asia.

EU Priorities in Central Asia
Strategies since 2007
As stated above, the EU has been looking at the “wider region” through the prism of its ENP. However, many EU member states perceived the ENP as a way of compensation for these countries not to rush into a membership application. Meanwhile, Russia grew increasingly wary of the EU’s objectives in its Eurasian periphery, which culminated in the “Ukraine crisis” ongoing since 2014. Russia has long viewed Central Asia and other post-Soviet states as strategic areas of interest and part of its “near abroad”. Underlining this, Russian President Vladimir Putin once famously called the collapse of the Soviet empire “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. [42] Later in 2013, China launched the BRI and forcefully engaged in the geopolitical interface between West and East, pursuing the ultimate objective of creating and improving land-based and maritime infrastructure between European and China. [43] EU policy towards Central Asia was long dormant and only gained momentum with the “Strategy for a New Partnership with Central Asia”. [44]

Adopted in 2007, the strategy was welcomed at the time as one of the first attempts to define common interests and potential areas for cooperation and to provide a comprehensive stance vis-à-vis the region-as-a-whole. It sought to reconcile EU material interests in terms of energy security with attempts to foster human rights and democracy in the region. This approach was well documented in projects such as the “EU Rule of Law initiative” and “Human Rights Dialogue” as core instruments towards achieving that end. Fenton [45] has stressed the extent to which the EU’s Central Asia Strategy 2007 was modeled like the ENP and its offspring for the East European neighbors, the Eastern Partnership. Both Eastern Partnership and the Central Asia Strategy include a multilateral prologue encouraging ‘region-building’ amongst the five countries of Central Asia, yet are in practice based on the principles of strict bilateralism in practical terms. They also converge on several objectives and policy priorities set for the relationship, such as the enhancement of energy security.[46] Hence, it could be seen as “the continuation of an internal process of institutionalization” [47] underlined by bureaucratic dynamics inside the European Commission—the key author of the policy script—as well as a legacy of enlargement-tested policies to apply to the immediate vicinity. Interestingly, as Kassenova observed, “it was not a strategy in the conventional relationship, sense of the word, yet it served the purpose of signaling the EU’s special interest” in the region—albeit running short on clear-cut commitments and objectives. [48]

The 2007 strategy was broad in scope, covering security, trade, development aid, good governance, rule–of law, human rights, democracy promotion, and energy. [49] This was likely related to the division between the EU’s member states on how to approach Central Asia. Some, including France, Germany, and Italy have emphasized economic, security, and energy interests, whereas other EU member states such as the Scandinavians and the British favored a focus on good governance and human rights and specific issues related to corruption in the public sector. The EU implemented structured political dialogues, human rights structured dialogues, educational initiatives, energy and transport initiatives, rule of law initiatives, and other related programs within the states of the region. However, tellingly, the states of Central Asia were not included in either the ENP or the Eastern Partnership, being seen as part of the backyard of the Neighbourhood. Interestingly, at the time of the launch of the ENP, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry asked about the policy asking for potential inclusion of the country—a desire that spurred quite some deliberations in the European Parliament in 2006. [50] MEP and rapporteur on the European neighborhood policy report, Charles Tannock, admitted that he supported extending the European neighborhood policy to the Republic of Kazakhstan. In written personal communication, the Commission, however, rejected this because “Kazakhstan does not share a border with an EU Member State or acceding country, even though its westward extension is arguably geographically in Europe proper”. [51] The explanation is precarious, as Jordan also does not share such a border but enjoys ENP status. [52] More significantly, “Of strategic importance to the EU are, however, Kazakhstan’s vast oil and gas reserves which it is eager to sell to the EU without depending entirely on Russian pipelines”. [53] EU member states also seek to access Yellow Cake Kazakh uranium to help feed future energy needs. [54] ENP membership for Kazakhstan, according to Charles Tannock, “would be an excellent way forward… to further enhance Kazakhstan’s relations with the EU, consolidate its path to democracy, enhance respect for human rights, and the rule of law, and to work on a free trade agreement with the EU”. [55]

Ultimately, the EU [Strategy in Central Asia of 2007 has failed to “Europeanize” the domestic politics of Central Asian states that remain impervious to democracy promotion, Western human rights regimes, and shared policy discourses. Instead, the EU has focused on forms of external governance that are predicated on the pragmatic self-promotion of EU material (mainly economic) interests and protecting European homeland security around issues such as borders, migration, and counterterrorism. Therefore, EU engagement with Central Asia has been based on a transactional model of policymaking, rather than one based on communities of shared ideas and discourses. This helps to explain why the emphasis on projecting normative power as prescribed by the European Security Strategy (2003) has been replaced by a focus on the EU’s economic/security interests in the European Union Global Strategy (2016). Rather than exporting values into the European periphery, this more pragmatic approach, influenced by realist thinking, focuses on striking public and private sector deals and protecting European security via a series of formal agreements and tacit understandings with Russia and China. This approach recognizes that EU influence falls behind that of other regional actors such as Russia, China, and the US—trade aside. Both rhetorically and empirically, the EU has pursued self-interested policies towards Central Asia, and the region is secondary in importance for the EU to South-East Europe, the Balkans, and Ukraine plus other “nearer” neighbors to Europe. This equates to a form of “normalization” in EU foreign policy based more on self-interest as opposed to primarily on values, as Manners suggests. [56]

The EU’s 2012 progress report highlighted issues with the countries of the region five years after implementing the initial strategy. [57] In the intervening five years, the EU insisted on a High-Level EU-Central Asia Security Dialogue and a renewal of the EU Special Representative, currently assumed by the Slovakian Peter Burian, a former secretary of state and ambassador to NATO and the US. The revised strategy also emphasized economic development, border regions, energy, human rights, good governance, and corruption as key issues. [58] But despite Brexit, dissent among EU member states on whether to focus on material interests or the pursuit of liberal internationalist-inspired values persists and undermines the implementation of EU bilateral and multilateral policies. As late as March 2016, the decidedly pro-normative power European Parliament highlighted: “[…] the need for an EU-Central Asia strategy that is not based on geostrategic interests but is designed to develop a participative and democratic society […]”. [59] The EU has also had some notable successes in its cooperation with Central Asia. The Union-funded Central Asian countries to the tune of €1028 million from 2014 to 2020 under the auspices of the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI). The EU has also implemented its European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) with some vigor in Central Asia, and Turkmenistan excepted. The EU also maintains a range of PCAs with Central Asian states. [60] The EU’s CADAP program has helped drug rehabilitation programs in Central Asia associated with addiction. [61] Finally, the EU has also been relatively successful in the realm of border management through the BOMCA program.—

The Strategy on Central Asia 2019

While we do not traditionally see the EU as a major actor in Central Asia, it has undertaken many programs and investments in the region going back to the 1990s. [62] The Chinese BRI gives the impression of side-lining EU programs, but this is an unfair reading of the situation in Central Asian states and levels of EU engagement. Yet, the regions’ relative lack of visibility in EU policy, not being a priority region for the EU, and the structural weaknesses of the CFSP decision-making process have militated against a coherent and effective EU foreign policy, despite the efforts made about the 2007 strategy. Against this backdrop, the Council of the EU adopted the new EU Central Asia Strategy in June 2019, replacing the one endorsed in 2007. [63] Together with the conclusions for a new EU Central Asia Strategy, the Council also adopted the Joint Communication “The EU and Central Asia: New Opportunities for a Stronger Partnership”, which was developed by the High Representative and the European Commission.

In a nutshell, the new strategy presents an attempt at recalibrating the bilateral relationship between the EU, its member states, and the five Central Asian republics with a focus on the promotion of resilience, prosperity, and better working relationships (“working better together”) between the key stakeholders. The strategy also encourages the EU and Central Asia to pursue regional cooperation as a cross-cutting priority vis-à-vis different policy considerations for key stakeholders. In terms of an overarching objective, the Joint Communication aims at forging ‘a stronger, modern and non-exclusive partnership with the countries of Central Asia so that the region develops as a sustainable, more resilient, prosperous, and closely interconnected economic and political space’.[64] Subsequently, the Joint Communication lists: (1) the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, (2) the cooperation on border management, migration, and mobility as well as addressing common security challenges; (3) environmental, climate and water resilience underneath the aim of the overarching goal of resilience; (4) partnership for economic reform, (5) intra- and inter-regional trade and investment facilitation, (6) sustainable connectivity as well as (7) youth, education, innovation, and culture become part of the prosperity objective; and (8) partnership with civil societies and parliaments as well as (9) cooperation for high impact (at a more global level) and (10) raising the overall profile of partnership eventually inform the objective of working better together.

Core Elements of Comparison between the 2007 and 2019 Strategies

In this sub-section, we compare the strategies of 2007 and 2019 to trace potential changes in the EU’s foreign policy approach towards Central Asia (see Table 1). The Core elements of comparison can be summarised as follows:

Whereas the number of key priorities has changed between the two documents, remarkably, there is high continuity in terms of what has been identified by the relevant services as being of key importance. What is perhaps more important is that priorities such as “democracy promotion” have not entirely disappeared from the agenda, but they seem to be subordinate to the principle of resilience which will benefit both the EU and the individual Central Asian state. To speak of “democracy promotion”—as compared to “democratization” makes a difference in terms of ambition. Interestingly, the Council conclusions de-link this objective from the overall regional approach by “reiterate[ing] that the EU’s relations are linked to the readiness of individual Central Asian countries to undertake reforms and strengthen democracy, human rights, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, as well as to modernize and diversify the economy, including by supporting the private sector, in particular small and medium-sized enterprises, in a free market economy”. [65] This means nothing less than that the Central Asian countries themselves determine democratic reform.

The new strategy emphasizes the non-exclusive character of the relationship—which is relevant considering the Ukraine crisis. Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of the Eurasian Economic Union [66]; hence, any other economic relationship, such as the Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreements (EPCAs), which have been designed to replace the existing twenty-year-old PCAs, needs to consider this. For the time being, the EU has signed an EPCA with Kazakhstan and negotiations are underway with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan—with Tajikistan has expressed interest in engaging in EPCA talks.

Both documents—the Council Conclusions and the Joint Communication of 2019—emphasize that commitment to balancing bilateral and regional approaches, is ultimately so that “the EU will seek to deepen its engagement with those Central Asian countries willing and able to intensify relations”. [67] Still, the Joint Communication is quite detailed to single out activities that have the potential to contribute to creating stronger links between the Central Asia countries. Yet, this remains a challenging task in a region that is characterized by low levels of intra-regional trade, hovering around 5% of the region’s total trade in 2018. [68] Thus, the region-ness somewhat remains a construed idea for Central Asia.

The Joint Communication emphasizes locality several times: First, by relating to other organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and International Labour Organization (ILO), in terms of their work ‘on the ground’ or their field missions. This pinpoints the EU’s growing readiness to become more inclusive in terms of its external relations in the region. Second, and perhaps the Communication relates to civil societies and the role of parliaments as drivers for reform. To give an example: “The EU will aim to include Central Asian employers’ and workers’ associations into dialogue on issues ranging from the investment climate to education [69], employability (including women and girls) and labor market reform”. [70]

Table 1. Comparing key priorities in EU Central Asia ‘Strategies’ of 2007 and 2019.
Present in 2 columns
1^st column
European Council 2007
(1) Human rights, rule of law, good governance, and democratization;
(2) Youth and education;
(3) Economic development, trade, and investment;
(4) Energy and transport;
(5) Environmental sustainability and water;
(6) Combating common threats and challenges;
(7) Intercultural dialogue
(see Council of the EU 2007, 7–17).

2^nd Column
European Commission 2019
Resilience
(1) the promotion of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law;
(2) the cooperation on border management, migration, and mobility as well as addressing commons security challenges;
(3) environmental, climate, and water resilience.
Prosperity
(4) partnership for economic reform;
(5) intra- and inter-regional trade and investment facilitation;
(6) sustainable connectivity;
(7) youth, education, innovation, and culture.
Working better together
(8) partnership with civil societies and parliaments;
(9) cooperation for high impact (at a more global level);
(10) raising the overall profile of the partnership
(see European Commission 2019, 2–16).
Source: Compiled by the authors.

Comparing the 2007 and 2019 EU Central Asia Strategies has shown that there has been a longstanding awareness of balancing bilateralism, multilateralism, and bi-regionalism in terms of the EU-Central Asia relationship. In terms of European external governance, we identified three key findings. 1) some of the EU-central normative ambitions, such as the democratization of its “wider neighborhood” have been brought into perspective with other objectives and the changing geopolitical context. It has not disappeared altogether from the EU’s foreign policy agenda, though. 2) There is a greater awareness of non-exclusivity in the multi-level structure of the EU-Central Asia relationship both at the global, regional, and local levels. 3) Local-level players–such as the ones from other international organizations, civil society, and parliaments are looked at as potential partners that help substantiate the relationship. [71] There is a greater “awareness” of the locality of the relationship. With the opening of an EU mission to Turkmenistan, the Union will also eventually be able to be more present at the “local” level, too.

A More Geopolitical EU: Embracing “Resilience” and “Principled Pragmatism”

The shift in EU foreign policy from normative power to principled pragmatism/resilience is perhaps most noticeable in the EU’s immediate neighborhood. But also in a global sense, the EU appears to be targeting new markets dominated by emerging great powers such as China, India, and the BRICS but is also developing a pragmatic approach to broader issues of the management of global security. [72] The EUGS initiated this shift (2016) emphasizing the impact of neighborhood countries and their near neighbors on Europe in terms of security, migration, terrorism, and economically. The EU, therefore, prioritizes internal and border security according to a pragmatic case-by-case engagement with external actors near Europe.

Relations between the EU and its nearest neighbors are now governed as much by this new realist agenda as they are by liberal internationalist principles. Some have implicitly—perhaps unwittingly—criticized the EU not for being a realist but for a lack of ability and ambition to implement the EUGS, particularly in the defense and security fields. [73] Others squarely criticize the EUGS for lacking ambition, particularly in Asia, and hint that Europe free rides on the US despite being the leading trade partner with Central Asia. [74] Its greater emphasis on building resilience in the political and economic systems of the (near) neighborhood states instead of projecting “normative power”, however, is lauded. As Maull states: “Of course, the EU should engage more in strengthening the resilience of neighboring countries to the south and the east of the Union”. [75] Europe should strive to get better at state-building abroad.

In principle, the EU’s economy might allow the Union to play an important role in the region. The EU is the largest trade partner with Central Asia with €13.8 billion of imports from Central Asia into the EU single market and €8.4 billion in exports from the EU to Central Asia in 2016. [76] However, this has not leveraged greater democratization or the adaptation of liberal internationalist principles in Central Asia. Indeed, the most influential external influences in Central Asia are of Russian and Chinese origin, especially as they relate to energy politics. [77] The EU (and US policies) lack the impact of Russia and China. The EU and the US often ineffectively channel their development policies through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), their defense policies through NATO [78], their democracy promotion policies through the OSCE, and their trade policies bilaterally between individual EU and Central Asian states, respectively. Indeed, Peyrouse presciently captures the operational and ideational environment of EU policy towards Central Asia:
Meanwhile, the local governments [in Central Asia] encourage the competition patterns between external actors, as they enable the regimes to enforce ‘multi-vector’ strategies by pitting these actors against each other. This results in multiple uncoordinated initiatives over which they can exert greater control. Central Asian regimes are interested in having good links with Europe, which is an alternative to the more direct and substantial influence of Russia and China. The EU policy will remain torn between different approaches, but with an already visible trend to prioritize energy and security over the values agenda. Even dynamized, the EU Strategy in Central Asia remains without measure compared to the Eastern Partnership (directed toward Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and the three South Caucasian states). [79]

Since the end of the Cold War, EU policy towards Central Asia has been embedded in its external governance regime. The EU has also attempted to export its acquis in the region with varying degrees of success in the areas of good governance, rule of law, and values. The export of EU norms and values has been perhaps less impactful in Central Asia, where states are not necessarily as receptive to democracy promotion and have increasingly taken their lead from Russia and/or China. [80] Broader EU strategy since the EUGS in 2016 has also become more pragmatic, more focused on the EU itself, and less focused on the projection of norms and values abroad. [81] EU policy towards Central Asia recognizes that there is a limit if external governance approaches to policy-making and norm diffusion tell the full picture of EU engagement in the region or the role taken by other great powers.

Conclusion

EU policy towards Central Asia increasingly incorporates non-European perspectives from the “outside-in”, rather than just projecting the EU perspective from the “inside-out”. Recently reformulated EU foreign policy towards Central Asia is pragmatically taking its lead from Chinese and Russian policy in the region, recognizing that geography continues to shape geopolitics in Central Asia. Indeed, the Russian intervention in Kazakhstan in January 2022 is a testament to the continued importance of geopolitics in Central Asian politics. [82] Our analysis of the EU’s recent foreign policy strategies with previous initiatives further suggests that the EU is putting more emphasis on state resilience rather than democratization in Central Asia. This reflects also in EU policy towards Central Asia during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has been determined by pragmatism and helps the states of the region to become more resilient. [83] The EU has bolstered engagement with other actors in the wider region. In effect, the EU is normalizing its foreign policy to pragmatically serve its interests in Central Asia. [84]

As a result, the EU embraces geoeconomic and geopolitical competition in the region. The EU’s traditional foreign policy towards Central Asia, focusing on institution-building and the advancement of human rights, largely kept the Union out of geopolitical competition with China and Russia in the region.[85] But geopolitics and geoeconomics guide the shift towards a more pragmatic approach as much as it is by EU values, recognizing the limited impact of the latter in Central Asia and the need to compete with China and Russia for influence in Europe’s periphery.

The EU is not a key actor—trade aside—in Central Asia compared to Russia, China, and other regionally-based actors in the broader region and is unlikely to gain significant geopolitical clout in the foreseeable future. Presently, the EU and its member states are more concerned with the Covid-19 pandemic, the European migration crisis, EU counter-terrorism cooperation, the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidency and its legacy, the situation in Afghanistan, Brexit, and their domestic concerns around economic growth. The region remains secondary in importance for the EU to South-East Europe, the Balkans, and Ukraine plus other “nearer” Neighbours to Europe. And finally, much of the exchange between European and Central Asian states occurs bilaterally, undercutting EU initiatives.

Within the context of the EUGS (2016), the EU needs to develop strengthened security, economic, and defense relationships with the countries of Central Asia. The EU’s “comprehensive approach” to peacebuilding, security-sector reform, and stabilization should be pursued through the “principled pragmatic” and “resilience” lens of the EUGS, with a focus on European energy security, protecting European security interests as well as the projection of human security, human rights, and associated values into the Neighbourhood. The EU’s renovated reflexive multilateralism is also an appropriate policy instrument for the EU to pursue its vital interests in Central Asia at a time when China and Russia are on the rise in the region. The past quarter-century of relations between the EU and Central Asia highlights that pragmatic engagement is the most sensible means to pursue each party’s interests and values together. The days of the EU pursuing its version of “normative power Europe” externally in Central Asia are long gone. [86] As is stated above, reformulated EU policy towards Central Asia is indirectly taking a lead from Chinese and Russian policy in the region in that geography continues to shape geopolitics in the region. [87] EU policy vis-à-vis Central Asia is also increasingly guided by its Member States’ interests, “principled pragmatism” and resilience predicated on an outside-in conception of international relations.

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