External relations, long-term energy security and human rights drive the EU's relations with Russia. They assume greater importance as that state's power, confidence and prosperity revive from its traumatic experience since the end of the cold war. European states cannot handle these issues alone or bilaterally, so of necessity they must combine to pool their approach to Vladimir Putin's leadership through the EU. Last Friday's summit in Finland clearly illustrates the difficulties and potential involved.
EU leaders devoted much of their time behind the scenes to ensure they presented a united and coherent face towards Putin's Russia, especially on energy security. Otherwise, he is well able to exploit certain faultlines between them. Germany and Russia, for example, are building a direct gas pipeline which does not cross Poland and is therefore less open to multilateral bargaining. This bilateral relationship cannot be the model for the EU's overall relationship with Russia, but nonetheless constrains it. An alternative approach, supported by most other EU member states, stresses transparency, the rule of law, reciprocity, non-discrimination, market opening and access in the long-term energy relationship.
The summit outcome points towards a potentially constructive renegotiation of the energy charter combining the two approaches in a trustworthy and legally-binding deal. Mr Putin is not willing to reopen the refusal to allow EU companies become involved in the development of huge energy reserves in Shtokman and Sakhalin. But Russia has to sell its gas and oil and needs long term security of contract just as much as its EU partners. There is the making of a mutually beneficial future here, based on the fact that the EU receives 25 per cent of its gas from Russia. In Ireland's case it is 80 per cent; this makes security of supply and a common EU approach to it a vital interest, as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern noted.
These energy interests cannot be traded for human rights, however. Negotiation of a long-term partnership agreement with Russia is to start next month and continue into next year. It must include comprehensive and principled treatment of human rights norms based on the universal principles to which Russia and the EU are committed through the Council of Europe and the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe. Mr Putin's ascendancy within Russian politics is based on a recovery of confidence and pride after the many humiliations of state power following the collapse of the USSR. But renewed power has been achieved at the cost of human rights within Russia and an aggressive, bullying attitude towards its near neighbours. The expulsion of Georgians from Russia in response to the arrest of four Russian officers there on spying charges, drastic restrictions on international human rights organisations working in Russia and the murder of the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya are part of a troubling and dangerous pattern of authoritarianism. The EU cannot be silent in the face of such retrogressive trends.