"Russia and the EU have varying opinions on what is going on in countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. These differences come as a barrier between Russia and the European Union, while the two ought to come closer together. My point mainly concerns developments in Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova." As Mr. Kosachev sees it, "Russia is making the more precise evaluation of what lies behind those developments."
"The European Union is luring those countries with promises of granting them membership quite soon. In fact, no tangible guarantees of such membership have come up. That is incorrect, to say the least-this flirting harasses practical integration projects involving those countries and Russia.
"There is a graphic example. I mean problems that arose quite recently round an emergent United Economic Environment, in which Ukraine is expected to take part. Ukraine appears to have lost interest in the endeavor-it prefers prospects to get closer to the European Union, though such prospects have no practical footing."
Mr. Kosachev highlighted another point of Russian-EU disputes-dual standards in stances on ethnic minorities' situation in the post-Soviet Baltic countries.
"The European Union regards the issue closed. Riga [Latvian capital] was recently electing its Town Council. 60 per cent of townspeople did not come to the polls, yet we have reason to expect that the EU will recognize the election quite normal, perhaps because nationals of other EU countries were welcome to the polls if they had spent at least six months in Latvia. Meanwhile, people born in Latvia stay disfranchised. Possibly, EU standards do not entitle them to suffrage," said the parliamentarian.
