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ON ANGELA MERKEL’S VISIT TO RUSSIA
ALEKSANDR RAHR,
Director of Russia/CIS programs, German Council on Foreign Policy, Coordinator of the EU-Russia Forum (in cooperation with the European Commission)
The German EU presidency will most likely give a chance to stabilize Russia-EU relations and establish strategic partnership. Russia and Germany share common interests in East Europe. And Germany will give priority to the East-European policy during its EU presidency.
For example, under the French and Portuguese EU presidency the EU foreign policy was focused on North Africa. Germany is more interested in cooperation with Russia, especially in the light of the EU’s growing reliance on imported energy resources. Angela Merkel’s visit to Russia on January 21st, where she arrives before visiting the European capitals, is very telling in this sense.
But in the German Chancellor’s list of state visits Moscow comes after Washington where she went in the very beginning of 2007. What could that mean? Evidently, Mrs. Chancellor is not so fond of Russia. She belongs to that part of the German political elite who remember the life in the German Democratic Republic as life in the Soviet occupation zone.
However Merkel is not a Kaiser but the Chancellor of a democratic state. Besides, no one can bring to naught the last 15 years of the Russian-German bilateral relations. Angela Merkel has to protect interests of the German business involved in building the North European gas pipeline with the Russian company Gazprom.
On the other hand, now that Germany chairs the EU, Merkel has to win support of other members of the Union and defer to their opinion, for instance to Poland’s opinion. All this implies that the German Chancellor can’t pursue unilateral policy towards Russia.
The EU regulations demand that Merkel acts in line with the common European policy. And after the energy rows with Ukraine and Belarus this common European policy consists in trying to distant itself from Russia and finding alternative routs of oil and gas supplies. This won’t please Russia but Germany can’t ignore position of other EU members.
The European mass media only foment suspicion about Russia. The German press, for example, takes little interest in precise information and detailed facts. As a result they fail to cover the events and their background, but simply raise a stink.
Mass media have to sell their information products, so it is more profitable for them to tell stories of the big bad Russian bear. It is not surprising that in the recent Russia-Belarus energy conflict the latter has been represented as a victim of its stronger neighbor. And Russia has been shown as the main offender.
January 19, 2007
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