On Wednesday, the two heads of the France-Russia Friendship Group in parliament presented to the press their report on a future for EU-Russia relations. It was simultaneously passed to the National Assembly as the report of the parliamentary foreign committee.
It was said at the news conference that the 84-page report has taken nine months to prepare with the two holding a series of meetings and conversations at different levels in Moscow, Brussels, Paris and other European capitals.
One of the main problems in arranging EU-Russia relations is, in their view, that the European Union takes no interest in Russia as it is but prefers to picture it as it likes.
Things are not made easier by Russia's duality, when there are in one and the same country signs of a great power (level of research work, competence in the leading sectors, strategic nuclear arsenal, reserves of oil and gas) adjacent to an economic performance putting its GDP on a par with Belgium and The Netherlands.
Seeking to provide a true image, the parliamentarians have come up with a two-part document. In the first part, they make a study of the present-day Russia and its foreign policy, as well as its development prospects.
In the opinion of the French MPs, Russia today is in between pragmatism and the desire to rehabilitate its great-power status. This duality is reflected, on one hand, in the desire for sped-up economic advance and strengthening of the vertical of power; on the other hand, in the formula Russia Plus 11 or USSR Minus 3 (meaning the former Soviet republics, except the Baltics).
In thus study, the authors envision two development scenarios for Russia. First, they see the preservation of its "exceptionality", including by "Asiatization", as "theoretically possible" but improbable. They view as trustworthy the second scenario - Russia adopts the Western values, conducts a foreign policy preferring regional stability to intervention, relies on privileged relations with the European Union.
Part two of the report deals with the state and development of these relations. The European Union and Russia "need each other" and have a tremendous potential for cooperation. In other words, EU-Russia relations can be only partnership, which can only be strategic.
Within this vision of things, the French parliamentarians consider four scenarios: Russia's joining the European Union; "everything-except-institutions" partnership; strategic partnership; preservation of the status-quo, i.e. further cooperation in different forms without taking the long-term prospect into account.
The authors believe that neither is feasible. The most probable pattern for the development of EU-Russia relations is a mix of strategic partnership, limited to certain areas such as energy, research and education, relations of cooperation in other areas.
The French parliamentarians also think that relations of partnership with Russia demand from the European Union the elaboration of a Russian policy relying on the two principles - firmness and non-provocation.
