How Mother Teresa's work spurred growth of 'voluntourism'

Mother Teresa's Nobel Prize winning mission in India has prompted many people to work short missions and 'voluntourism' into their lives.

Nuns of Mother Teresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity, and Roman Catholic priests say a prayer beside the Mother's monument in her native town of Skopje, during a ceremony to mark the centennial of her birth, on Thursday, Aug. 26.

Boris Grdanoski/AP

New Delhi

When Mother Teresa began her work with the poor of Calcutta, she also opened her doors to drop-in backpackers who wanted to volunteer. One of those was Susan Drees Kadota, an American, who spent 2-1/2 months bathing, feeding, and simply talking with disabled residents.

Ms. Kadota connected with one young woman, who, because of a physical deformity, had been turned out by her family. "You know," she told Kadota, "it’s really nice just to talk to people.”

Kadota took it as a life lesson: “Taking time out of your so-called busy life to be with people is important and useful.”

Mother Teresa may be remembered most today – her 100th birthday anniversary – for her lifelong work with the poor. But she also helped expand the modern notion of going on an overseas mission, encouraging ordinary people taking short breaks and volunteer on vacations.

The new volunteer model

As a young woman, Mother Teresa joined a Roman Catholic religious order that sent her on a mission from her homeland in what is now Macedonia to far-off India. She went on to found the organization Missionaries of Charity to offer palliative care to those cast away and dying on the streets of Calcutta.

She faced criticism over the years from those who said the work did little to address the root causes of grinding poverty.

But she mostly attracted international acclaim, eventually winning the Nobel Peace Prize. As her fame grew, she opened her work to the hundreds of annual volunteers of any – or no – faith often coming and going unannounced.

The model shares some similarities with a wave of modern missions abroad, including short-duration service or evangelism trips, Catholic lay missionaries, and even the secular trend of "voluntourism." While there is some unease about the sustainability of and what can be accomplished in shorter-term mission work abroad, proponents point out that it often leads to more substantial volunteerism and has cross-cultural benefits.

“Mother Teresa’s program was a precursor to VolunTourism,” says David Clemmons, founder of voluntourism.org, by e-mail. “There was no grand, long-term commitment. The program was crafted to allow for movement and flow of volunteers. And if individuals wished to volunteer for a day or two and then go sightseeing elsewhere in Calcutta … they were free to do so. In this way, Mother Teresa was ahead of her time.”

Voluntourism and short trips: modern missions?

Voluntourism became a buzzword in 2005, says Mr. Clemmons, and polling indicates significant interest. A 2008 poll by the University of California at San Diego found 40 percent of Americans willing to spend several weeks on vacations that involve volunteer service, and 13 percent willing to spend an entire year.

Christian missions, meanwhile, have grown over the past 100 years. Data from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity in South Hamilton, Mass., shows the number of missionaries sent in 2010 stands at 400,000, compared with 62,000 in 1910.

“There’s certainly a lot more people who are doing shorter-term missions,” says Bert Hickman, a research associate with the center. “People still go for a lifetime. [But] some people go intending to go for a lifetime, but for whatever reasons they decide to come back to their home country – where that wouldn’t have been an option 100 years ago.”

Within the Catholic Church, missionary work has expanded beyond the clergy to include more lay people. As ordained numbers decline in Western nations, lay missionaries have stepped in to carry forward the work of aging missionary orders

More than 1 in 5 US Catholic missionaries serving abroad are not ordained, according to the US Catholic Mission Association. Three quarters of these lay missionaries serve for less than a year, according to the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service.

The rise of short-term missions can be traced partly to the decline in lifelong careers generally, according to a 2006 address given by Robert Schreiter, a Catholic priest and academic. “If one starts to look at one’s life in segments of time, some period can be allotted work like mission.”

He notes criticism of short-term mission work, including the damage they may do to the “social ecology” of a place and the little that may be accomplished for the people there.

Gateway to lifetime of service

“The object of evangelization may not be ‘them’ – those whom ‘we’ visit. Perhaps one of the most significant features of short-term mission – even missions lasting up to two years – is how it can change the lives of those who experience it,” he writes. “The fact that so many of the short-term missioners choose the helping professions as their life’s work, rather than simply finding a job which leads to acquiring wealth, is indicative that something like this is going on.”

The stories of Mother Teresa’s drop-in volunteers suggest that short-term work indeed becomes a gateway to a lifetime of service.

Kadota said volunteers she met in Calcutta, including a doctor and nurse couple, sometimes struggled with how much good could be done given the basic facilities and supplies. The dilemma left her later in life seeking “to work for more systemic change.”

She went on to volunteer as a lay missionary for 2-1/2 years in El Salvador, then worked for Catholic Relief Services helping set up a pairing of parishes in the US with those in the developing world.

Paying it forward

Heather Huppert Schwegler, an American, was inspired to go to Calcutta in 1988 after watching a documentary about Mother Teresa. She spent a few weeks working in Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Calcutta before traveling to Hong Kong. Once there, she went to volunteer with the local Missionaries of Charity – it became something she tried to do wherever she traveled.

She was cleaning a toilet in the Hong Kong mission when she met Mother Teresa for the first time. “I see you are doing God’s work,” Mother Teresa said to her.

Ms. Schwegler grew up without religion, but at age 21 she felt drawn to Mother Teresa and drawn to Catholicism, so she went back to Calcutta. She spent more weeks volunteering, and then did a two-week “come and see” – a trial period living in the convent for those considering joining the order.

At one point, she thought she might have seriously exposed herself to disease and became very nervous.

That night, Mother Teresa told Schwegler that when she continued volunteering the next day she was to “look into the eyes, and you need to see Jesus in every single one of them.”

Schwegler went back. “I suddenly saw there was such great suffering and nobody was complaining,” she explains, choking up.

She went on to be baptized with Mother Teresa as her godparent, but she didn’t join the order. Her family in America wasn’t supportive.

She returned to New York, spent some volunteering with the sisters there, and eventually got married. She has worked as a nurse, and now runs a day care for children for troubled backgrounds.

“I still have a great passion to work with the poorest of the poor,” says Schwegler.

Source - Christian Science Monitor

It’s global population shrinkage we should really worry about

Summer 2010

by Joergen Oerstroem Moeller

The problems associated with a global population of perhaps 11bn by 2050 are already beginning to loom large, but Joergen Oerstroem Moeller warns that the real challenges will come when by mid-century populations begin to shrink and economic growth becomes constrained

Most policymakers are becoming aware that by 2050 the global population will be somewhere between 9bn to 11bn; but most are also uncertain as to the implications of this. Asia is set to account for 5.2bn of this, and at the other end of the scale there will be only some 664m people living in Europe. The big surprise, with strong repercussions for Europe, is that Africa with 1.9bn people will be the second most populous continent and the only one whose population will still be growing. European policy analysts tend to bemoan Europe’s shrinking weight in the world, yet when the global population begins to fall after 2050, the fact is that Europe will be exceptionally well placed to derive benefit from its long experience of managing within the constraints of low population growth and limited resources.

If the rise of Asia can be taken as the economic paradigm of today, the population trends for tomorrow augur a shift of much of the world’s low-cost, labour-intensive manufacturing from Asia to Africa, right on Europe’s doorstep. Recent history and contemporary developments have shown that since 1950 first Japan then several smaller Asian countries and then China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have profited from moving into the so-called demographic window that favours economic development when a large proportion of the population is aged between 15 and 64.

Assuming that basic economics will not change, this means the world’s engine of growth will move from south Asia to Africa from 2030 to 2040. Such a shift will not only favour Africa, but also neighbouring countries and notably Europe.

Africa’s rich resources will help its rise. For several years China has been buying raw materials from Africa, and recently Brazil began doing the same through its iron ore company Vale. These new investors are seeking either to dominate the global market or to secure supplies for their own manufacturing industries. So far this has brought mutual benefits, but when manufacturing starts to shift to Africa, stimulated by the demographics, Asia and perhaps Latin America too will not need so many raw materials, while Africa may be unhappy to have handed control of its resources to outsiders.

European countries will be well served by a panoply of treaties and partnerships with Africa, while present-day African scepticism, sometimes accompanied by resentment nourished by colonialism will hopefully have been consigned to history, opening the door to a fruitful European-African relationship.

But it is by no means certain that future economic development will follow the pattern we have become accustomed to. The era of plenty that has governed development over the last 200 years seems likely to be replaced by an era of shortages. Scarcities of food, commodities, energy, oil and water, and the world’s newfound awareness of the need to protect our environment, all impose constraints on economic growth. So far these have spilled over into rising prices, but in the future a much more determined effort to cope with scarcities will be needed. Broadly speaking, the world will move from a fairly smooth distribution of benefits, flowing from economic growth based upon cheap commodities, to the need to share the burden of coping with shortages.

This calls for a totally new economic paradigm, because today’s conventional growth and distribution theories all focus upon distributing more. The first case of what to expect on a global scale was seen at the climate change summit in Copenhagen last December, when the world’s national political leaders failed so abysmally to grasp the issue confronting them.

The impact of the new constraints will be felt differently across the globe, depending on population densities and population growth, industrial structures, infrastructure and social fabric. Europe has already experienced some of these problems because of its low population growth. Yet the interesting and encouraging fact is that Europe has nevertheless been doing well in the sense that its annual per capita economic growth over the last 20 years has at about 1.5% been about the same as the United States. The inescapable truth is that higher growth in the U.S. is not due to a more efficient economic structure but almost exclusively to its growing population.

European attitudes towards using resources – as exemplified by the EU’s Lisbon strategy for improving competitiveness and its policies on climate change – display a much stronger awareness of the problems of running an economy with little or no population growth, including Europe’s willingness to focus on quality of growth and the need to squeeze the highest amount of the available resources.

Europe’s social structure is much more close-knit than that of the United States and that makes it easier to implement burden-sharing. People will seldom be attracted by sharing the burden of living within constraints, but their willingness to accept it depends to a large extent upon whether or not they regard it as fair. The United States, with a highly segmented population, is far less suited to this than are European societies, and the growth of the U.S. population from around 300m now to some 400m by mid-century will not make it easier.

Infrastructure in the United States also poses barriers to restructuring the economy. Major U.S. cities are laid out on the assumption that people use their own cars to get to work, making it very difficult if not impossible to introduce taxes on petrol, however necessary they may be. If such taxes were to be introduced, employees would immediately demand higher wages to compensate for higher costs, which would erode U.S. competitiveness.

The shift from an era of plenty to an era of burden-sharing will favour Europe. In fact, the winners in the decades to come will be those countries accustomed to living with a stable population, modest growth and tight control over their use of resources. Europe is the only part of the world that currently fits that description.

This leads to a further observation. It is likely that not long after 2050 populations will start to fall in all major regions, including Africa. The world will then face for the first time face the imperative of managing economies and societies with shrinking rather than growing populations. History tells us that economic growth depends on populations rising, but this is precisely the condition we will no longer be able to count on. Add to this the need for burden-sharing in an era of scarcities and it is not difficult to see that a whole new economic model is waiting to be invented. A simple calculation shows that if consumers around the globe imitate the American and European mass consumption pattern over the next half-century, societies will implode. The resources are simply not there.

Many arguments would lead one to expect that this new economic and social model will be crafted in the large Asian countries under the incentive of strong population pressures. Yet Europe will still have some cards up its sleeve, because along with Japan it is already the first region that has learnt to come to grips with the constraints imposed by a stable population on economic development and social stability.

Many other countries are beginning to look at consequences of having a stable population and they do not like what they see. There are indications that China may abandon or modify its one child policy on the assumption that population growth is necessary for economic growth, but while this may postpone the quandary, it will not make the problem go away. Sooner or later, the global population will stabilise and then begin to fall. This will become the determining factor for mid-21st century society.

Whether we like such a situation or not is largely irrelevant. First, it seems certain to happen. Second, if we try to reverse the trend – supposing we can, which is doubtful – this would trigger a disastrous scramble for resources that will not be there.

Europe’s contribution to future global development, in keeping with its civilisation and cultural heritage, might be to help the world face the coming era of constraints by marshalling the intellectual power and political will be needed to shape an economic and social model that suits the world as it is going to be, rather than trying to force the world to conform to the outdated model of today.

Why the EU newcomers still don't make the best of membership

Summer 2010
by Pavel Telicka

Many of the EU’s newest member states are no longer the euro-enthusiasts of yesteryear, and they also complain they have less influence on policymaking than they had hoped. Pavel Telicka assesses the newcomers' track record so far

Shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, Vaclav Havel led the so-called “new democracies” in declaring that Prague’s goal was to join the European Union. Knowledge of the EU among Central Europeans was at that time superficial to say the least, yet that goal of EU accession was to become an indispensible part of post-communist Europe’s political and economic transition.

The real reasons why these countries should join the European Union would only become clearer once the enlargement process was under way, and in any case they would differ not just between countries but also between the different age groups, social strata and professional structures that made up their populations. They nevertheless had a number of reasons in common. In Vaclav Havel’s words, the enlargement process was to lead to a “return to Europe.”

And then, of course, the applicant countries were concerned to have a seat at the table and a voice that could exert some influence on political and economic developments in Europe and beyond; for decades they had been isolated and forced to accept decisions taken in Moscow. But the change was at first less than democratic. In the early years after democracy was restored, the countries of central and eastern Europe found themselves exposed to the stern regulatory environment of the EU’s internal market without any chance to influence the way it was shaped or implemented.

Almost 20 years on, it is worth looking at whether and how effectively these countries’ two principle accession aims have been achieved. President Havel has often been criticised by Czech politicians for "disputing" the idea that even during the years of Soviet domination these countries were still a part of Europe.

The reality is, though, that it was only during the 1990s that the formerly communist countries regained their European heritage; Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania and all the others are once again part of Europe, belonging beyond any question at all to the same family as Spain, Italy or Greece. The big question, then, is what influence do the new EU members of this family have on the EU’s political processes?

Influence in Brussels’ decision-making could come only with accession, and even then a say in directing EU affairs would only come gradually. But the key elements that would determine the new candidate countries' political weight included their democratisation record, their ability to comply with EU objectives, including external policies, and the maturity of their own political system.

The formerly communist candidate countries naturally had to undergo an unprecedented democratisation process after 40 years of rule from Moscow. For the rest of the EU this was a process that is not only hard to understand but also defies assessment. The majority of central and eastern European countries nevertheless achieved their transformation goals, even if some of these achievements have proved somewhat fragile. But they were in any case sufficient for accession to the EU to go ahead, while also giving these countries a solid and credible basis for building on.

It is also fair to point out these criteria were never met by some of the older member states, and in recent years we have also witnessed an erosion of EU solidarity and heightened levels of national self-interest. The crises in EU politics has become a reality, and so much so that some people in western Europe were looking to central and eastern Europe in the hopes that their own tired democracies would get fresh impetus from the lively new politics of the newcomers. Sadly, this was true of the 1990s and is no longer the case. The older member states have firmly established their influence in various parts of the Union’s decision-making process, whereas the newcomers have yet to establish themselves in a club that they do not know and did not build.

Once the "big bang" enlargement had become a fact, when in May 2004 the 10 new members increased the EU from 15 states to 25, with Bulgaria and Romania to bring that to 27 two years later, the question being asked by the EU’s top officials was what European policies might be expected from the newcomers, and which would integrate the most easily. My own country, the Czech Republic, despite the well-known euroscepticism of political leaders like Vaclav Klaus, was expected to perform well.

But although, along with the other candidates, we in the Czech Republic were eager to join the EU, very little had been decided as to the policies to adopt once we were a full member. There was a lack of clarity concerning the country’s vision, its major interests within the EU and on strategy and priorities. There had been little political or public discussion on these issues. So it came as no surprise that many Czech politicians had little connection with the EU and to this day still perceive the EU as being the “other side.” The warnings by Vaclav Klaus that “we cannot influence anything in the EU and we will melt like a sugar cube in a cup of coffee” have borne fruit of a sort, for we Czechs can still hardly claim to have a conceptually sound European policy, and in that we differ little from the other new member states. This absence of a European policy has worrying implications for the predictability and positioning of the country, and thus for its influence within the wider EU structure. And on top of this we as a nation share with the older member states a propensity to blame the EU for anything and everything.

The last few years have seen politics in Europe become more nationally focused and pragmatic, responding all too readily to the whims of public opinion as they ebb and flow. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that European politics are now in crisis, and that being the case in the old EU, it exacerbates the political fragility of the new member states.

At the same time, it is a sad truth that both the Czech Republic and the other new members failed to appoint their best people to EU-related jobs. And given that the majority of older member states still send their best negotiators to Brussels, this is a practice the new member states can’t afford.

The combination of factors limiting the newcomer countries’ influence in the EU is daunting but not disastrous. It spans a lack of carefully prepared policies, sometimes antagonistic attitudes towards the EU (not that the EU does not deserve constructive criticism from time to time), weakly defined national interests, the absence of a strategic approach and the lack of a truly European mindset.

Are all these factors reason for pessimism? Not so much pessimism, perhaps, but rather impatience. The new member states' potential is being wasted. It is probably fair to say that they have not met the expectations of many people, and that the heritage of 40 years of isolation is proving heavier than anticipated.

On the other hand, there is evidence that the new members are becoming better equipped to cope with challenges and that their performance is improving. The evidence for this was provided by the EU presidencies of Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Neither of them were failures if compared to the presidencies of older member states, and the Czechs found themselves in the chair at a particularly difficult time. Not everyone appreciated the Czechs’ style, and the controversial “Entropa” installation by Czech artist David Černý in the entrance hall of the Council of Ministers building certainly provoked irritation as well as public attention. But the presidency nevertheless delivered in a number of areas, particularly transport and energy.

Mistakes were made too, of course. Many of them had their roots in the silly so-called euroscepticism of certain Czech politicians that inevitably were aimed in an open and competitive environment. But in general the Czechs performed no worse than the EU Presidency average up until the moment when domestic political calculation gained the upper hand over national interests and the Presidency’s responsibilities. The downfall of the government during its EU presidency caused by opportunistic opposition politicians devalued many efforts of officials and even some of the ministers.

Sadly, the flavour that remains is bitter. Yet the Czech Republic’s EU Presidency provided the country and many of its senior politicians with an important learning experience. There is now a much better understanding of what the EU really is about, and what is needed for any member state to have a say and at least exert some influence. There is also a better sense of responsibility in EU matters. The views of Vaclav Klaus are now without doubt in the minority, and perhaps even an extreme minority at that. This became painfully clear during the final stages of the Lisbon treaty saga. Czechs have learned that although they may have had a disproportionatly large influence on EU matters during the presidency, if they had less short-sighted political leaders they might have generated even more political capitial to be spent advantageously at a later date.

Yet the whole experience clearly strengthened the country’s integration into the EU, and there can be no doubt that the influence of the Czech Republic and other new member states is significantly higher than before the accession. That said, they have yet to exploit their full potential, and that's to the detriment of themseves and the European Union as a whole.

Source - www.europesworld.org

Georgia's mental revolution

Seven years after the Rose revolution, Georgia has come a long way

Aug 19th 2010 | Tbilisi

FOUNTAINS dance, children play and families stroll along Batumi’s five-mile seafront boulevard, lined with palm trees, hammocks and playgrounds. Less than a decade ago, Ajaria, a verdant south-western corner of Georgia of which Batumi is the regional capital, was the personal fief of Aslan Abashidze, a strongman who seemed to own the place more than run it. He never appeared without an army of goons, and closed the streets when his son felt like racing his Lamborghini. Cut off from the rest of Georgia by checkpoints, the economy was stagnant.

Today this gently beguiling holiday resort is an exhibition of Georgia’s capitalist achievements, a showcase of its transition and an advertisement for what Abkhazia, a separatist region to the north, could have become had it not been, in effect, annexed by Russia following the short Russia-Georgia war two years ago.

Like any advertisement, Batumi does not reveal the full picture. Away from the seashore, there are striking signs of poverty and unemployment in Georgia. But the change here is real—not just in the five-star hotels springing up in Batumi, its restaurants or the casinos full of Turkish punters, but in the way Ajaria is administered. So real, in fact, that some Russian officials are starting to worry about the unflattering gap between Ajaria and unreconstructed Abkhazia.

Ajaria’s governor, 38-year-old Levan Varshalomidze, has done much for Ajaria and rather less for himself. As he walks through Batumi’s old city, clad in jeans and without a bodyguard in sight, locals come up to thank him—and there is nothing forced in the gesture. Mr Varshalomidze belongs to the cohort of Georgians that came into their own after the Rose revolution of 2003. For all its problems, Georgia is in the hands of a young, pragmatic generation which has thrown off the Soviet-era personality cults, privileges and paranoia.

Merab Mamardashvili, a Georgian philosopher, once wrote that “A Soviet man is a product of invisible changes, degradation and progressive deformation. Breaking the chain of those changes is hard. Perhaps they are irreversible.” No post-Soviet country is completely free from its legacy but Georgia has gone further than many in breaking the chain.

Gia Kancheli, a 75-year-old celebrated Georgian composer, says: “In the old days the decent people of my generation tried not to be Soviet. Today we are again trying not to be Soviet, but the new generation is different. They don’t have to try: they are simply free of that pressure and those lies.”

Georgia suffered gravely under Stalinist repression, but in the late Soviet period it learned to play by the rules and profit from the system. It became a playground of the Soviet empire, a source of wine, culture and entertainment. But when the empire collapsed, Georgia descended into a near-failed state: dysfunctional and disfigured by banditry and ethnic conflict. By 2003 the violence had largely stopped but the state remained weak and corrupt.

Today Georgia has reinvented itself as the star of the Caucasus. It is less corrupt than most former Soviet republics and one of the easiest places in the world to do business, according to the World Bank. Its liberalised economy has weathered Russian embargoes, and the state held together during the war with Russia. Its police do not take bribes and electricity is no longer a luxury. Most important, people are no longer surprised by such success. The biggest transformation is in their minds.

A playground no more

Georgia’s transition from a former Soviet republic into a non-Soviet one began with the Rose revolution of November 2003, in which the 36-year-old Mikhail Saakashvili and his friends pushed aside the 75-year-old Eduard Shevardnadze. This was not the move from dictatorship to freedom sometimes portrayed in the West; Mr Shevardnadze was no dictator, and some of the reformers were his protégés. Rather, as Levan Ramishvili, who runs the Liberty Institute, a Georgian think-tank, says, it was a social and generational shift, almost a cultural revolution.

It was certainly a change of elite. Some of the new guard, like Mr Saakashvili, a graduate of Columbia University, had studied and worked in the West. Others came from NGOs. Most were under 40. All were free from Soviet bureaucratic baggage and electrified by the promise of getting their country back and rebuilding it as a modern state.

The support base for this revolution was not the capital, Tbilisi, the traditional driver of Georgian politics, but villages and small towns, where family structures and individualism were stronger and Soviet rule was weaker. The new ruling class did not seek approval from Tbilisi’s intelligentsia, which had become enormously powerful in the late Soviet period. Piqued by Mr Saakashvili’s lack of reverence, many started to oppose his rule. Vano Merabishvili, Georgia’s interior minister, recalls that a few weeks after taking office he received a call from a famous theatre director pleading for the release of two of his actors, who had been arrested in a drunken brawl. Mr Merabishvili refused, violating the special relationship between the state and its cultural elite.

The reformers have also eschewed popular legends of Georgian exceptionalism, which the intelligentsia and their nationalist opponents fought to appropriate in the early years of independence (and which some opposition leaders are trying to revive). The young Western-educated elite cringed at the day-long banquets laced with toasts and songs, the celebrations of idleness. They promoted an alternative national story, of a hard-working, dynamic and European country: “Switzerland with elements of Singapore,” as Mr Saakashvili once put it.

Georgia’s modernisation was vigorous, even brutal. Gia Sulkhanishvili, a businessman and a former student of Mr Mamardashvili, says: “The government took an axe to the Soviet practices and destroyed the environment which bred nepotism, hypocrisy and idleness.” The change is all the more startling when Georgia’s fate is contrasted with that of other former Soviet republics, including Russia. “As in Russia, there were laws in Georgia, but then there were informal rules which trumped them,” says Mr Sulkhanishvili. “Those rules are largely gone.”

Overnight, the reformers abolished the corrupt 15,000-strong traffic police and replaced them with 2,300 American-style road patrollers. The new recruits were motivated not only by decent pay and new cars but by the fact that their new bosses did not take bribes. Entire ministries were culled, along with 30,000 bureaucrats. The government slashed red tape, privatised everything from hotels to hospitals and used the money to build new roads.

Much of this liberalisation was pushed forward by Kakha Bendukidze, a business magnate of libertarian temperament who had made his fortune in Russia before Vladimir Putin started to put pressure on business. Georgia, Mr Bendukidze argued, was so poor that only radical reform would do. But he also realised that economic reforms needed to be backed by humanities and education projects to engender a new national elite. In 2007 he founded the Free University in Tbilisi, which teaches law, business and languages. Each graduate undertakes to finance a new student, creating a sense of stakeholding in Georgian society.

A virtual democracy?

In 2003 the young, energetic, English-speaking Mr Saakashvili represented a visible change from the old Soviet-style nomenclature. Today an even younger generation has come of age. As liberal, patriotic and Westernised as the president, its members object to his obsession with power, his centralisation and his populism. They see the state not as a sacred cow but as a provider of basic services and security.

.The decisive moment, some of them say, came in November 2007, when Mr Saakashvili, faced with the prospect of losing power, sent riot police to crack down on a demonstration and to trash a television station. The government said it acted to avert a coup. But its decision shocked Georgia, and the outside world.

Shorena Shaverdashvili, an American-educated editor of the Liberal, a weekly magazine, says this was the point at which Mr Saakashvili became more interested in retaining power than in pushing through reforms. “He alienated and then turned against the part of Georgian society which was most willing to catalyse the transformation,” she says. Several of Mr Saakashvili’s former allies have now turned into opponents.

On paper Georgia has all the institutions proper to a democracy. In practice few of them enjoy real power. Parliament, dominated by Mr Saakashvili’s United National Movement party, has become little more than a rubber stamp. The police and judiciary are beholden to politicians. Key decisions are taken by a circle of insiders whose influence often extends far beyond their job titles. Democratic procedure is often sacrificed to expediency—catastrophically so in the case of Mr Saakashvili’s decision two years ago to attack South Ossetia with heavy artillery fire, giving Russia the excuse it needed to invade.

The situation is not helped by the motley state of Georgia’s opposition, which often does a better job at discrediting itself than the government, or by the weakness of civil society. Yet, as Ms Shaverdashvili puts it, “The government makes sure that we don’t get strong fast.” Businessmen are wary of financing the opposition or advertising in Georgia’s critical media for fear of incurring the government’s displeasure.

Mr Saakashvili is more a moderniser than a democrat. Yet in order for his reforms to become irreversible, Georgia needs strong democratic institutions; above all an independent judiciary and the rule of law. Mr Merabishvili argues that these cannot be simply decreed; they need to become entrenched tradition, recognised by Georgian society as a whole. So for the time being, he believes, it is the government that is best equipped to administer justice. This argument is all the more dangerous for being persuasive.

Too much personal power is concentrated in the hands of Mr Saakashvili and Mr Merabishvili, his feared interior minister. That is ominous for a country where power has not been transferred peacefully since independence. A set of proposed constitutional changes would shift more power to parliament and its nominated prime minister. But Mr Saakashvili’s critics say that discussion of the proposed reforms has been limited. They fear that the president will follow the example of Vladimir Putin and stay on as prime minister when his term expires in 2013. If he does, he risks destroying his own legacy.

After the collapse

Despite all the progress, Georgia’s future is fragile. Two years after the war, relations with Russia have not yet normalised. Russia’s heavy military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia remains a threat to Georgia’s security. There is also a risk that Mr Saakashvili will exploit this threat to consolidate his own power. Earlier this year a television channel controlled by a friend of the president broadcast a spoof documentary about another Russian invasion, sparking panic among Georgians. The film, allegedly made with Mr Saakashvili’s approval (although the channel denies it), was meant to mobilise the population. Instead, it infuriated it.

And yet the mental shift which has occurred in Georgia will make it hard to turn the country backwards. On June 25th police cordoned off the central square in Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, and, in the dead of night, toppled a statue of the former dictator that had survived the Soviet collapse and Russian bombardment in 2008. Yet there was neither celebration nor protest. Georgians had moved on.

Source - Economist.com

The end of Eastern Europe

Platform's comment on the article "The end of Eastern Europe" at Ukrainian magazine "Tyjden"

http://www.ut.net.ua/art/165/0/4224/

Any geopolitical constructions are affected with simplified patterns. Europe's division by regions isn't an exclusion. Ukraine is a part of Eastern Europe as it is Bosnia with its triple identity. All these countries are tied up by joint communist past as, for example, Latin American nations are intertwined through their colonial past. Geopolitics is more concerned with history, and to a lesser extent with economics. No secret that Europe is moving to prosperity and open society with various speeds. Unfortunately, we are in Europe's slow lane and on the same level as Macedonia, Albania or Bosnia. P.S. Some Ukrainian journalist of this magazine has already brought up the issue of geopolitical division in the centre and east of Europe. We'd like to read any conceptually new research articles from such trustworthy expert as Mr. Edward Lucas.

Turkey and its rebel Kurds

Turkey’s long-running battle with Kurdish separatists is intensifying, again

SHOULD the Turks and Kurds live together? The answer from many of Turkey’s restive Kurds has long been no. A vicious separatist campaign launched by rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been raging since 1984. In recent months the PKK has stepped up its attacks, killing dozens of Turkish soldiers in and beyond the predominantly Kurdish south-east. Most recently, on July 20th, a Kurdish raid near the town of Cukurca killed six Turkish troops and injured at least 15.

But now a growing number of Turks are questioning the merits of cohabiting with the country’s estimated 14m Kurds. Never mind that Istanbul is the world’s largest Kurdish city, or that few of the provinces claimed by the Kurds are ethnically homogenous. In television debates and across the blogosphere support for the idea that the Kurds should go their own way is growing. Onur Sahin, who heads the Chamber of Agriculture in the Black Sea province of Ordu, says his fellow producers no longer want seasonal migrant Kurds to harvest their hazelnut crops.

Meanwhile, the military campaign against the PKK is intensifying. The mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party, which has governed Turkey since 2002, plans to deploy a new professional army along the border with Iraq, where the PKK has havens. Some fear a return to the excesses of the 1990s, when over 3,000 Kurdish villages were forcibly evacuated and thousands of Kurds were imprisoned, murdered or disappeared.

Over the border, Turkish air raids on the PKK’s mountain bases in northern Iraq are increasing. America is helping by providing intelligence and broadening the air corridor used by Turkish fighter jets. Yet the Americans are worried by Turkey’s increasingly strident calls for the Iraqi Kurds to hand over some 200 rebels, including their own leaders. The last thing the Americans want to see, as they pull out of Iraq, is a war between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds.

All of this is a far cry from last year when AK heralded its so-called Kurdish “opening”. It made peace with the Iraqi Kurds and opened a consulate in Erbil, their capital. At home, a set of political and cultural reforms was meant to coax the PKK into laying down its arms, in the wake of a unilateral PKK ceasefire that was declared in April but that never took full effect. But the opening ground to a halt following the return last October of 34 PKK fighters to Turkey from Iraq. More were meant to follow. But the group prompted a public outcry by touring the south-east in guerrilla outfits, declaring victory. In response the government stepped up its arrests of members of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), accusing them of PKK membership. Half of the returnees have been put on trial for refusing to repent; ten are in prison. Last month the PKK hit back by calling off its truce.

Some voices plead for a return to peace. A group of Turkish intellectuals has petitioned the government to change a controversial article of the constitution that deems all Turkish citizens to be Turks. One AK mayor has suggested that Turkish men take Kurdish women as second wives. Others say that AK must talk to the PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Despite 11 years of solitary confinement in an island prison off Istanbul, Mr Ocalan retains the loyalty of his fighters and the affection of millions of Kurds.

In fact, secret talks with Mr Ocalan, supposedly conducted by security and intelligence operatives, have reportedly been going on for some time. Murat Karayilan, the PKK’s commander in northern Iraq, says his group wants to talk to politicians, not spooks, and this week proposed a bilateral ceasefire. But as next July’s parliamentary elections draw nearer, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is unlikely to risk nationalist ire by openly talking to a group deemed by Turkey and its Western allies to be terrorists. On the other hand, as Mr Erdogan knows, abandoning reform in favour of war will only strengthen the hand of his opponents within the army. He is, as an old Turkish saying goes, holding a stick with shit at both ends.

Source - www.economist.com

Iran, Tajikistan And Afghanistan: Diplomacy Of Brotherhood

The trilateral summit of the presidents of three Persian-speaking countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan wrapped up on August 5 in Tehran and recorded another unforgettable event in the memory of the three brother nations. With innumerable cultural, religious, social, lingual and strategic commonalities, the three countries of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have demonstrated their potentiality to build one of the strongest diplomatic partnerships in the region and benefit the world nations through a unique, fruitful and constructive cooperation.

The people of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, whose countries were parts of the Greater Persia in ancient times, consider Iran as their cultural homeland and believe that the Iranian nation is the inheritor of their paternal legacy, the Persian civilization.

I had the opportunity to conduct an exclusive interview with the Tajikistan ambassador in Tehran for the local weekly magazine last month in which I discovered for the first time that the roots of cordiality and affinity between Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan are so deep and robust that one can hardly imagine. The Tajikistani ambassador Ramadan Mirza talked of Iran so enthusiastically and passionately that I felt for a while that he is in actuality more Iranian than I am. He called Iran a brother nation several times, talked of Tehran as an ancient and respectable city, paid homage to the antiquity and preciousness of Persian language as the common heritage of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan and told me of his early childhood's aspiration of visiting Iran. He told me that when, under the soviet dominance, he was attending the high school in Tajikistan, he read about the historical sites of Iran such as the mausoleum of Persian poet Saadi, the tomb of Cyrus the Great or the ancient site of Persepolis in his school textbooks and since then, it became his ambition to visit these sites one day. He said that when he was selected to his mission as the Tajikistan ambassador in Tehran, his 50-year-long dream came true and he finally succeeded in visiting the sites which seemed to him unreachable and inaccessible long ago. Mr. Mirza told me that it is his honor to serve as his country's ambassador in Tehran where he can freely visit the four corners of Iran whenever he likes.

It was in this interview that Mr. Mirza revealed for the first time that the Tajikistani President Emomali Rahmon has formally asked his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Nowrouz festival of 2011 be held in Persepolis which is actually the native soil of Nowrouz.

Nowrouz is a set of ancient festivities held at the beginning of vernal equinox to mark the commencement of new solar year.

He also pointed to the fact the despite the longstanding dominance of Russia over the newly-established state of Tajikistan, the Tajik people has never forgotten their maternal Persian language. It's noteworthy that since Tajikistan was separated from the Greater Persia during the Russo-Persian wars of 1860s, the Soviet rulers launched a de-Persianization project in Tajikistan where almost everyone would speak Persian and write in the Iranian alphabet. The history of Russia's relations with Iran narrates the bitter story that the Eastern superpower never dealt with Iran in a sincere, truthful and loyal manner. Traditionally, the Iranian nation thinks of Russia as a betraying, hypocritical and oppressive state which has shown its hostility towards the Southern neighbor on various occasions. One clear instance is the de-Persianization project in which the national media outlets, schools, public offices and universities of Tajikistan were banned from using the Persian alphabet and forced to employ Cyrillic alphabet instead. This was an artificial and uninteresting incorporation of the Russian culture into Tajikistan which had been an inseparable constituent of Iran's large puzzle of cultural heritage since the establishment of Achaemenid dynasty 2500 years ago.

Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan have the capability to form a powerful political coalition. They share the same language, religion and cultural background and this is something which is a rarity in the contemporary world. They have common ideological objectives and since they've historically suffered from the subjugation of the superpowers, they seek independence and freedom. The closeness of the three countries is evident in their broad collaborations in various fields including academic exchanges, agricultural cooperation, military ties, financial relations and cultural collaborations. The three countries are slated to launch a trilateral Persian-language TV channel which is based in Dushanbe and will be broadcasting programs produced by each party. A long railway will be connecting the three countries in near future. All of them are the members of Organization of Islamic Conference and Non-Aligned Movement. They also sit at the same table in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as member states.

The joint declaration of the fourth summit of the heads of states of Islamic Republic of Iran, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Tajikistan was compiled in 14 articles and signed by the three presidents who have planned to hold the fifth joint meeting in Afghanistan in 2011.

In the 5th article, the three brother countries emphasized the importance of trilateral financial relations and highlighted the expansion of economic transactions through empowering and assisting the merchants and investors of each country.

In the 7th article, the three parties supported the development of cultural, scientific and educational cooperation and underscored the significance of joint planning for collaboration in the fields of culture, literature, history, common cultural heritage and sports.

In the 9th article, they announced their complete readiness to combat extremism, terrorism, organized crimes and drug trafficking which pose serious threats to the security and stability of the three countries.

In the 11th article, the three countries stressed the importance of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and underlined the inalienable right of the NPT member states to use the nuclear power for peaceful purposes under the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The fifth joint summit of the presidents of Iran, Tajikistan and Afghanistan will be held next year and its date will be announced very soon.

Overall, it seems that the expansion of relations between the three Persian-speaking countries who are bound together through ancient cultural ties will serve to meet the interests of the Central Asian and Middle Eastern nations and contribute to the sustainable and durable stability and development in the region.

Kourosh Ziabari

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian media correspondent, freelance journalist and interviewer. He is a contributing writer of Finland’s Award-winning Ovi Magazine and the the Foreign Policy Journal. He is a member of Tlaxcala Translators Network for Linguistic Diversity (Spain). He is also a member of World Student Community for Sustainable Development (WSC-SD). Kourosh Ziabari's articles have appeared in a number of Canadian, Belgian, Italian, French and German websites. He can be reached at kziabari@gmail.com

http://www.eurasiareview.com/201008146994/iran-tajikistan-and-afghanistan-diplomacy-of-brotherhood.html

Qatar, de pequeño país pesquero a dueño de medio mundo

 La Autoridad Inversora de Qatar maneja unos 70.000 millones de dólares

 Su renta per cápita es la segunda más alta del mundo, 83.000 dólares al año

Beirut.- La adquisición de los almacenes Harrods, buque insignia del lujo londinense que ha costado 2.200 millones de dólares al reino de Qatar, es sólo el penúltimo desembolso masivo de un emirato del Golfo que en los últimos años aprovecha las ingentes ganancias obtenidas de sus recursos energéticos para ampliar su presencia a todo el planeta.

El diario británico The Independent lo definía esta semana como "el diminuto estado que compró el mundo". Al menos, está haciéndose con participaciones de boyantes empresas privadas de Europa, Estados Unidos y Asia.

Su instrumento es la Autoridad Inversora de Qatar (AIQ), creada en 2005 para manejar los fondos del Tesoro del país –o lo que es lo mismo, de su familia real que lo gestiona- y diversificar sus beneficios por la explotación de recursos naturales en un plazo de 10 a 15 años.

El objetivo es minimizar los riesgos que implica confiar en los precios del sector energético, y para ello se centran en tres clases de activos financieros: los que le reportan el sector inmobiliario, el patrimonio privado y los fondos de inversión.

Los vehículos con los que expande sus tentáculos son Qatar Holding –considerado el vehículo primario para las inversiones directas y estratégicas del Estado-, Qatar Diar –la rama inmobiliaria de la Autoridad- y Delta Two, centrada en el sector privado. Los fondos que respaldan sus aventuras financieras no faltan.

Se calcula que la AIQ maneja unos 70.000 millones de dólares obtenidos fundamentalmente de sus ingentes reservas de gas natural –estimadas en 26 billones de metros cúbicos, lo que le convierte en la tercera reserva más importante del mundo, sólo por detrás de Rusia e Irán- que se vienen a sumar al producto de sus yacimientos, descubiertos en los años 40 y equivalentes a unos 15.000 millones de barriles de crudo.

Actualmente, Qatar produce 800.000 barriles de petróleo al día. Nada mal para un país de 11.437 kilómetros cuadrados –el equivalente a la provincia de Murcia- que, hasta ese momento, era uno de los protectorados británicos más pobres de Oriente Próximo y vivía casi exclusivamente de la pesca y de la caza de perlas. Hoy esos tiempos han quedado en el olvido.

Con una rapidez inusitada, el pequeño territorio pesquero se está convirtiendo en el dueño del mundo. El nivel de vida de sus ciudadanos es más lujoso del que se disfruta en Occidente; la renta per cápita de Qatar es la segunda más alta del mundo con 83.000 dólares anuales –sólo por debajo de Liechenstein- y sus inversiones llegan a medio mundo.

Una gran diversificación

Según la herramienta financiera 'online' Zawya, especializada en los negocios de Oriente Próximo, las inversiones internacionales de Qatar Holding incluyen el control de la británica Four Seasons Healthcare y una importante participación en el Mercado de Valores de Londres, en el Mercado noruego, en el Banco de Comercio y Finanzas de Jordania, en el Banco Financiero Asiático de Malasia (controla el 70% del mismo) y en el grupo médico Raffles de Singapur.

Sus ambiciones alcanzan algunas de las más antiguas y valiosas empresas del mundo y no parecen tener fronteras. Tienen intereses en Marruecos, Sudán, Cuba, Indonesia… En este último país, Qatar Holding anunció la creación, hace pocos días, de una sucursal, PT Holding Indonesia, que gestionará un fondo de 1.000 millones de dólares a invertir en los recursos naturales e infraestructura de la mayor economía del Sureste Asiático.

En Gran Bretaña las inversiones comenzaron hace tres años, con la Bolsa de Valores, donde dispone del 15% del capital. Tras ello, comenzó la fiebre europea inversora de la AIQ: compró un cuarto de las participaciones de la cadena de supermercados Sainsbury, intervino en los bancos Barclays (maneja un 7% de la entidad) y Credit Suisse, y ha comprado el 17% del capital del grupo automovilístico alemán Volkswagen, el más poderoso de Europa.

En Cuba, Qatar incluso llegó a un acuerdo con el régimen castrista para lanzar un hotel de lujo de 250 camas en Cayo Largo.

En cuanto al sector inmobiliario, Qatari Diar es la plataforma que gestiona los intereses del emirato wahabí tanto a nivel local como internacional, ya que incluye adquisiciones en Marruecos, Egipto, Omán, Siria y Gran Bretaña, donde ha conseguido cuatro de las principales cadenas de sanatorios a cambio de 5.000 millones de dólares.

Además, tiene intereses en el complejo londinese del Grupo Canary Wharf (controla el 14,7% de esta sociedad de desarrollo, inversión y gestión financiera) y explota el principal centro comercial de Kuala Lumpur. La AIQ también es propietaria del edificio que alberga la Embajada estadounidense en Londres, que según un acuerdo alcanzado con los árabes no abandonará hasta 2017, cuando se reinstalará en otro inmueble.

Source - www.elmundo.es

Los gallegos sólo podrán elegir en Infantil la lengua en la que educar a sus hijos

La Xunta ha aprobado el decreto del plurilingüismo que estará en vigor el próximo curso. La normativa regula la enseñanza de la lengua gallega en la educación obligatoria e incluye la consulta a los padres sólo en la etapa de educación infantil, "avalada por sentencias del Tribunal Supremo y del Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña".

El presidente de la Xunta, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, ha explicado al término de la reunión semanal del Gobierno gallego que para la elaboración del decreto el Ejecutivo ha tenido en cuenta el dictamen del Consello Consultivo, que "veía falta de cobertura legal" en la consulta a los padres en las etapas de educación Primaria y Secundaria.

Por este motivo, Núñez Feijóo explicó que la Xunta remitirá al Parlamento autonómico un proyecto de ley que dé cobertura legal a la consulta a los padres en esas etapas, de modo que ésta se pueda realizar en la presente legislatura para cumplir con su "compromiso electoral".

El titular de la Xunta afirmó que el decreto garantiza el "equilibrio" entre gallego y castellano, introduce la enseñanza "progresiva" de una lengua extranjera y "garantiza la libertad de profesores y alumnos", así como la participación "máxima posible" de las familias en la educación de sus hijos.

Núñez Feijóo rechazó que retirar la consulta a los padres en las etapas de educación Primaria y Secundaria fuese una "rectificación" y señaló que su Ejecutivo ha tenido en cuenta el dictamen el Consello Consultivo, que establecía "falta de cobertura legal suficiente", según dijo, para hacer esta pregunta en estas etapas.

El jefe del Ejecutivo gallego afirmó que "se omite" que el decreto en vigor, aprobado la pasada legislatura, está en los tribunales porque "ignoró" el dictamen del Consello Consultivo.

En Educación Infantil los padres tendrán que marcar cada año en una casilla la lengua materna de sus hijos en los sobres de matrícula, que es el modelo "avalado" por sentencias del Tribunal Supremo y del Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Cataluña.

'Equilibrio 50/50'

En el caso de educación Primaria y Secundaria se establecerá por "criterio pedagógico" y en "equilibrio del 50/50" el idioma de las asignaturas troncales .

Este modelo cambiará cuando el Parlamento apruebe la ley que dará cobertura legal a la consulta a los padres en esta etapa, según indicó Núñez Feijóo.

Esta ley, que se elaborará 'ad hoc', no tiene referencias similares en otras comunidades autónomas y contemplará, además, dotar de mayor autoridad a los profesores en las aulas e incentivará la corresponsabilidad "padres profesores".

El presidente gallego indicó que el informe de la Asesoría Jurídica de la Xunta sobre el dictamen del Consello Consultivo acredita "de forma clara y rotunda" la consulta a los padres en Infantil y advierte de la "falta de cobertura legal" para realizar esta pregunta en Primaria y Secundaria, por lo que ése es el motivo para hacer una nueva ley

Source: elmundo.es

Germany and the Eastern Partnership

2010-06-18 | Justyna Gotkowska

Germany has set its own bilateral cooperation with partner countries in the east above the joint projects of the Eastern Partnership. In doing so, Berlin's guiding principle is that German money allocated for the projects on development cooperation in the east should bring political and economic benefits first of all to Germany.

Germany perceives the Eastern Partnership as an initiative that is conducive to German interests, but at the same time as one that could undermine them. Berlin would like the Eastern Partnership to be an instrument that brings the partner countries closer to the EU economically but not politically. Germany has opted for a tightening of the economic cooperation with the partner countries, by signing deals on deep free trade areas and harmonising part of the legislation of these countries with the acquis communautaire. On the other hand, Germany does not want the Eastern Partnership to evolve and turn into an initiative that offers the partner countries prospects of membership and antagonises Russia. Therefore Germany is trying to counteract any elements of the Eastern Partnership that would help it develop in the aforementioned direction. Moreover, Germany has set its own bilateral cooperation with partner countries in the east above the joint projects of the Eastern Partnership. In doing so, Berlin's guiding principle is that German money allocated for the projects on development cooperation in the east should bring political and economic benefits first of all to Germany.

The Eastern Partnership vis-a-vis German policy towards the EU's Eastern neighbourhood

Germany's position on the Eastern Partnership (EaP) is shaped by three factors:

1. Within the framework of the EaP, Germany's priority is to tighten economic cooperation with the partner countries[1]. From the standpoint of Germany, these countries are attractive to German exporters and investors because of their prospects for economic growth and a growing domestic demand, the cheap labour force, geographic proximity, cultural bonds and the fact that German companies have broadened their knowledge of the region and its specific character[2]. Berlin has stepped up its activity in these countries which is signified by a dynamic growth of both German exports and investments[3].

2. From Germany’s standpoint, the EaP should not become a pre-accession instrument which would fuel membership expectations in the partner countries and their 'advocates' among the EU member states. Germany is stressing that this initiative should be perceived exclusively as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy and be bound by its confines. Berlin therefore objects to any declarations and actions within the EaP framework, which may emphasise the exceptionality of the partner countries in their relations with the EU and which could eventually become an incentive for negotiations concerning their possible accession in the future. Ever since the EU enlargement of 2004, and especially that of 2007 (Bulgaria and Romania), Germany has suffered from enlargement fatigue – the political elite and society have grown increasingly tired of the enlargement process. Up to now, the issue of Eastern partner countries joining the EU has been treated as an open question, although put off till some indefinite time in the future. However, recent programmes and declarations by German Christian Democrats[4] suggest that it is impossible to offer prospects of membership to all European neighbours and that the borders of the European Union should be marked out, while internal integration and implementation of the Treaty of Lisbon reforms should be prioritised. From Germany’s standpoint, the EU has grown less 'steerable' following the enlargement, while the accession of new members has weakened the hitherto leading tandem of Germany and France. Any further enlargement (including Ukraine or Turkey) would significantly change the arrangement of influences in the EU, undermining Germany's position.

3. The stand taken by Germany comes down to the declaration that the EaP must not antagonise Moscow and jeopardise the strategic partnership between the EU and Russia, which is Berlin's priority. Germany is still guided by the Russia first principle, although this approach is currently counterbalanced by Germany's support for the EU's greater economic involvement in the Eastern neighbourhood and bilateral activity in these countries. With regard to members of the EaP, Germany is opting for the 'common neighbourhood' model wherein the EU and Russia would cooperate and reconcile their economic interests – hence German diplomacy's 'trust-building' measures with regard to Russia and regular reassuring declarations coming from politicians that the EaP is not designed as a rival project with regard to Russia[5].

German support for the development of economic cooperation

Germany is opting for a tightening of bilateral economic cooperation between the EU and the EaP members, and for the development of instruments that would be conducive to the intensification of these relations. Among the issues supported by Germany are:

1. The bilateral dimension of the EaP, i.e. concluding new association agreements between the EU and partner countries, which include deals on Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTA). Germany initiated[6] the conclusion of such agreements by the EU in 2007. According to the German concept, these agreements provided for extension of the European legal framework to the partner countries not just in the sphere of foreign trade, but also in the sectors that were of greatest interest to Germany and the EU, namely the energy sector, environmental protection, transportation, and internal security. Association agreements and DCFTA as well as a harmonisation of the legislation of the partner countries with the acquis are in Berlin's interest because of the structure of German exports and the specific features of German companies.

Germany exports medium and highly processed products (machinery, devices, chemical products, and ever more often technologies used in the energy sector and environmental protection). The structure of German exports is complementary to the economies of the partner countries in the east, who from the German point of view produce mostly semi-finished products, agricultural goods and groceries. Even though there has been no official German standpoint and no analyses published on how DCFTA could influence the German economy (especially in the case of Ukraine), it seems that Germany would not rule out – as opposed to other EU member states – extending DCFTA to sectors such as agriculture and metallurgy. Moreover, Germany is even likely to support Ukrainian appeals to open the EU market to Ukrainian agricultural products because of extensive German investments in Ukrainian agriculture and its food industry, as well as prospects of increasing German exports of machinery, devices, agricultural technologies, seeds and plant preservatives. Furthermore, similarly to many other EU members, Germany is seeking to harmonise Ukrainian legislation and norms with European standards, amend legislation to improve the investment climate and to curb state interference with the economy. It also wishes to strengthen the institutions that are responsible for the implementation of the aforementioned tasks. Such changes would support small and medium-sized German enterprises, which are dominant in the exports sector and whose overseas activity is highly dependent on the stability of conducting business activity and investments.

2. Comprehensive Institution Building Programme (CIB[7]). A natural consequence of Germany's support for the conclusion of association agreements and DCFTA and a harmonisation of the legislation, is its involvement in programmes of institutional development within the framework of the EaP[8]. These programmes are aimed at strengthening the institutions that are crucial for the successful implementation of the above mentioned agreements; they are to be put into operation in 2010. In all likelihood, they will be based on a twinning partnership of administrations of the EU members and the partner countries. So far, Germany has been the most active EU state involved in the implementationof twinning projects. Since 2009, German ministries and subordinate institutions on the federal level have been preparing for the distribution of funds allocated for these projects within the framework of the EaP[9]. From the German perspective, these EU projects are complementary to the bilateral instruments of German external economic policy since the twinning projects include the establishment of contact networks which are used for developing bilateral economic cooperation and supporting German export priorities.

Germany cautious about the elements of EaP with possible political implications

German diplomacy is being cautious about all those elements of the EaP that could have implications for the relations between the EU and the partner countries and for the relations with Russia, such as:

1. The language of statements and documents concerning the EaP and the EU relations with the countries included in the initiative. Germany attaches great importance to purging the language used of any statements that could be referred to by these countries in their possible pursuit for EU membership. Germany was the leader of a group of EU states who raised numerous objections to the text of the Joint Declaration adopted during the EaP summit in Prague (7 May 2009). It was Germany who insisted on using the term 'Eastern European Partners' instead of 'European states', which was supposed to prevent these countries from referring to Article 49 of the Treaty of Lisbon. Germany also persisted in its objections to calling the new deepened bilateral agreements 'the association agreements' in order to avoid connotations of Europe Agreements (concluded with Eastern and Central European states in the 1990s)[10]. German diplomacy remains cautious about the language of the documents prepared within the bilateral and multilateral dimension of the EaP; e.g. it avoids terming relations with the partner countries 'strategic' and calling the harmonisation of their legislation with the acquis an 'integration process'.

2. Development of the visa dialogue with the countries included in the EaP. Germany is opting for a visa regime liberalisation, although it remains sceptical about the introduction of a visa free regime and maintains that the visa negotiations do not have to lead to that. Germany agreed to include the following statement in the Prague summit declaration: 'The EU will take gradual steps towards full visa liberalisation as a long term goal for individual partner countries'. Nevertheless, in the EU dialogue with the partner countries, German diplomacy tries to prevent the use of any statements that could suggest that this goal is feasible in the near future. Instead, Germany prefers to use terms like 'long term' and 'gradual'. It also opposes the introduction of any 'road maps', which they perceive as the EU’s legal commitment to introduce a visa free regime, once the given country fulfils the criteria laid down by the EU.

Germany's cautious stand on visa issues stems from its concerns that by lifting visa regimes the EU would fuel the partner countries' expectations, and that such a decision would be interpreted as a step towards full membership. So far, the EU has applied a visa free regime in its relations with the countries who were offered EU membership prospects (Western Balkans). Another factor that influences the German standpoint on this issue is the situation on its internal political scene. German public opinion and regional politicians are extremely cautious about a liberalisation of the visa regime with Eastern European states; there is serious anxiety over a possible increase in illegal immigration, organised crime and an uncontrolled arrival of a cheap labour force from the east.

3. Cooperation within the multilateral dimension of the EaP. Apart from pushing through Russia's participation in multilateral projects, Germany is not actively involved in the multilateral dimension of the EaP, for three main reasons:

Firstly, the multilateral projects of the EaP are much less significant for Germany which has a well developed bilateral system of political, economic and cultural cooperation[11] (see Annexes). Germany prefers to finance its own projects in the partner countries rather than transfer more funds to the EaP projects. Compared to multilateral projects, bilateral cooperation brings Germany many more political and economic benefits, such as contacts with state administrations, a deeper understanding of local systems of governance, expert assessments in selected areas, easier access to foreign markets for German companies through pilot programmes, and image-building. German bilateral development cooperation is being carried out by federal and even regional ministries[12]. The areas of greatest interest to Germany include renewable energy and energy efficiency, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, agriculture, environmental protection, internal security and programmes that strengthen the rule of law and the judiciary. Germany also spends substantial resources on scholarships for students from the EaP member states, and on promoting German culture, education and science abroad[13].

Secondly, the multilateral cooperation format within the EaP does not fit in with the German concept of a 'common neighbourhood' of the EU and Russia, wherein Russia and the EU are equal partners[14]. Even though the concept presented in 2007 by the German presidency of the EU stated that Germany supported regional cooperation between the EU and Eastern Europe and South Caucasus states, this cooperation – according to German intentions – was supposed to include Russia to the greatest extent possible[15]. As a result, a Black Sea Synergy initiative was raised during the German presidency that was to encompass the countries surrounding the Black Sea[16]. Black Sea Synergy was designed as a 'trust-building' measure and a way of developing common projects in the EU-Russian neighbourhood. Initially, Germany even suggested merging the EaP with the Black Sea Synergy (which would mean Russia's participation on equal terms with other countries from the initiative) and appealed for granting both the initiatives equal status. Currently, in mind of the difficulties with projects within the Black Sea Synergy, Germany is pushing through Russia’s involvement in the initial phase of the projects implemented within multilateral platforms and flagship initiatives of the EaP.

Thirdly, Germany's greater involvement in the multilateral format of the EaP could increase the significance of the whole initiative and therefore invoke Russia's negative reaction as well as encourage some of the EaP members to seek EU membership.

4. Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum. German NGOs, think tanks and foundations do not seem excessively interested in operating within the EaP, contrary to the Polish ones. The first Civil Society Forum in Brussels in November 2009 was attended by few German organisations (three[17] out of 70 from the entire EU). This, however, does not mean that German organisations are not active in the east. They are quite numerously represented there, although engagement in tightening political relations between the partner countries and the EU has rather not been their priority. Most German organisations seem to share the view of the German government which supports bilateral involvement, the rule of law, democratisation and modernisation in those states, but not their political rapprochement with the EU.

Conclusions

1. Germany is not seeking to alter the nature of political relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours – Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Instead, Berlin is opting to keep the status quo, wherein the EaP is part of the European Neighbourhood Policy, which neither increases the chances of the partner countries for joining the EU, nor does it affect relations with Russia. Therefore, Germany is likely to block any increase of spending for the development of the EaP, to restrain the development of the visa dialogue and ignore multilateral cooperation within the framework of the EaP.

2. Germany insists that theEaP should be an instrument that fosters economic integration between the partner countries and the EU. Therefore Germany supports tightening economic cooperation with the partner countries and institutional development programs within the EaP, as well as within the German system of development cooperation.

3. Prospects of implementing joint Polish-German initiatives and projects within the framework of the EaP seem therefore rather limited, although they cannot be ruled out in such spheres as support for civil society and trilateral projects with Russia’s participation. Germany is not likely to engage as intensively as France did in the Union for the Mediterranean, to avoid raising the significance of the EaP initiative.

ANNEXES

ANNEX 1: Germany's official development aid for the countries included in the EaP[18]

Recipient country Yearly average for 2007 and 2008 (million USD) Germany's position on the list of multilateral and bilateral contributors of development aid

Armenia 25 4 (after USA, IDA[19], Japan)

Azerbaijan 29 4 (after IDA, USA, Turkey)

Belarus 20 1

Georgia 58 4 (after USA, IDA, EU)

Moldova 10 7 (after EU, IDA, IMF, USA, Sweden, Turkey)

Ukraine 74 3 (after EU, USA)

ANNEX 2: German development aid in Ukraine[20]

economic €134.5 million

(total by year end 2009)

financial €104.5 million

(total by year end 2009)

technical €30 million

(total by year end 2009)

legal

€310,000

(in 2009)

projects within the framework of the International Climate Initiative of the German government €4.5 million

(total by year end 2009)

projects supporting human rights €130,000

(in 2009)

scholarships granted by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)[21] about 1,100 scholarships a year

[1] See statements by the representatives of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, a German organisation that associates large, medium and small business, and co-creates the state policy towards Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Source: http://www.ost-ausschuss.de/ost-ausschuss-%C3%B6stliche-partnerschaft-kommt-zum-richtigen-zeitpunkt.

[2] Germany's economic relations with Eastern and Central European states, OSW Report, Warsaw, September 2008, pp. 4-12 (publication in Polish).

[3] In 2006-2008 Germany noted a double figure percentage growth in exports to the countries included in the EaP. Even though 2009 brought a considerable decline connected with the global crisis, it is still unlikely to change the positive tendency. Moreover, Germany remains one of the main investors in the countries included in the EaP.

[4] CDU distances itself from further EU enlargement, Best OSW 11 (86), 18 March 2009 (publication in Polish).

[5] Before the EaP summit in Prague on 7 May 2009, Günter Gloser (SPD), the then Minister of State for European Affairs in the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared during the European Union Commission session in the Bundestag, that EaP is not a rival project towards Russian activity and is not designed to push Russia out of the region. For details see 'Eastern Partnership should not be a rival of Russia' (Östliche Partnerschaft soll keine Konkurrenz zu Russland sein), European Union Commission session, hib-Meldung, 4 March 2009.

[6] This idea was included in the ENP+ concept, presented by the German presidency in the EU at the turn of 2006 and 2007, although not supported in full by all the EU member states.

[7] The funds allocated for the implementation of CIB in 2010-2013 amount to €175 million.

[8] Germany appealed for allocating EU funds for programmes of this type during its presidency in the EU.

[9] e.g. at the turn of 2009 and 2010 the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) organised a series of seminars on how to use the possibilities offered by twinning projects, implemented with the members of the EaP.

[10] Germany eventually gave its consent to the term 'association agreement' under pressure from the French presidency in the EU (second half of 2008). The French pointed out that a similar term had been used to describe agreements with the countries included in the Union for the Mediterranean.

[11] See the press release of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 21 May 2010: 'Germany actively supports the process of drawing the Eastern neighbours closer to the European Union. Germany is involved in the Eastern Partnership projects and complements this activity by numerous bilateral projects in the sphere of politics, economy and culture'.

[12] The projects are developed by the ministries themselves or implemented by German development cooperation organisations, specialised consultancy firms and NGOs.

[13] Germany attaches increasing importance to the ‘foreign cultural and education policy’ and is constantly increasing the amount of funds from the federal budget spent on those needs (from 0.43% in 2006 to 0.46% in 2008).

[14] See the statement by Klaus Mangold, the chairman of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations: 'Russia is not sufficiently involved in the Eastern Partnership'. Source: http://www.ost-ausschuss.de/ost-ausschuss-%C3%B6stliche-partnerschaft-kommt-zum-richtigen-zeitpunkt.

[15] A quote from the ENP+ concept: 'We are interested in Russia’s greater involvement in the organic modernisation of the common neighbourhood with the EU'.

[16] The Black Sea Synergy encompasses all the countries included in the EaP (apart from Belarus) as well as Turkey and Russia.

[17] European Exchange located in Berlin, Heinrich Böll Foundation (branch in Tbilisi) and Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (Ukrainian branch).

[18] Data quoted after the OECD, Aid Statistics, Recipient Aid Charts, http://www.oecd.org/countrylist/0,3349,en_2649_34447_25602317_1_1_1_1,00.html.

[19] IDA – International Development Association is a part of the World Bank.

[20] Data provided by Germany's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/de/Laenderinformationen/Ukraine/Bilateral.html, accessed on 27 May 2010.

[21] It should be stressed that DAAD is not the only German organisation financed from the state budget, which offers scholarships to students from the countries included in the EaP.

Source - Centre for Eastern Studies