Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
THURSDAY 11 OCTOBER 2007
Professor Julian Cooper and Professor Phil Hanson
Q80 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Has there been any attempt to single out the UK because the Litvinenko
affair?
Professor Hanson: In terms of business relations?
Q81 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Yes.
Professor Hanson: I was just looking at the
report, I think it is, in today's FT where there were some
conspicuous absentees from a Russian UK business forum of people
were due to speak on the Russian side. I think there were some
gestures of that kind, but I question whether that affects the
business that actually gets done. In that sort of high-profile
meeting, there is probably perceived to be a point in making some
kind of gesture of, "We're not happy with you" as a
part of the message, but that is just, I think, for effect rather
than for practical reasons. I do not think it is necessarily going
to affect the actual business that gets done.
Q82 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Would it spill over, for example, into relations with Poland?
Professor Cooper: Poland is now one of Russia's
largest trade partners with extraordinary growth. I think for
this year so far Poland is about the sixth largest trade partner
of Russia, a very, very sharp growth of trade regardless of the
strained political relations between those two countries' governments.
Professor Hanson: Geography is very powerful.
Professor Cooper: Geography is very powerful,
yes.
Q83 Lord Boyce:
You have touched on economic reform and the impression I have
got, and I may be wrong, is that it is running into the sand if
it has not actually stagnated. Is that correct and, if that is
correct, what would kick-start it again? Do we have to wait until
Putin moves on to where he is going to move on to? Is there something
which is going to happen?
Professor Hanson: I think that is the correct
perception. There are certain things which are still being struggled
along with, like the electricity reform, for example, but there
has been practically a dead stop in all other areas. That does
not necessarily mean that the business environment is not improving
for grassroots reasons, coming up from below, but as far as measures
of reform from the top are concerned, I think they have really
stopped. I share the view of many Russian reformists that the
one thing that would really give a kick-start again to reform
would be a fall in the oil price.
Q84 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Of course we are in the business of considering what the relationship
between the EU and Russia should be, so what should EU policy
be towards Russia?
Professor Hanson: I wish the EU had a policy
towards Russia! I think, first of all, that a stable relationship
in which you minimise the scope for big surprises is worth cultivating.
Some of the things that Russia presses for, like some rather more
momentous treaty-form successor to the Partnership and Co-operation
Agreement, I think that is quite unnecessary. A lot of the everyday
business between EU countries and Russia and to some extent between
the EU as an institution and Russia will go on. Even if there
is no replacement for the PCA, it will not stop business happening.
I think that is partly it. I think that we have got some leverage
on areas like Russia's accession to the World Trade Organisation
where, okay, there has been an EU bilateral agreement with Russia,
but we still have to check that the terms agreed there are being
implemented and of course we also play a role in other areas,
like the agricultural terms of accession. Ukraine—nobody
is expecting that the EU can really set some sort of timetable
for negotiations for Ukraine on accession, but I think continuing
to show an interest in that and to hold it out as a possibility
is something positive because I think that is something which
sort of helps to nudge Russia along, "We should be reforming
as well", even if there is no question of Russia becoming
a member in the foreseeable future, at least to sort of show that
the process of EU enlargement does not necessarily stop where
it has stopped so far. I think they are much more provoked by
NATO membership than they are by EU membership.
Q85 Lord Hamilton of Epsom:
Would it be to the benefit of Russia in the long term to be a
member of the EU? Does Russia feel that it is more European than
it is Asian to that extent? I did not realise that the population
of Russia is so small, only twice the size of Turkey, these great
candidates for European membership, so it strikes me as a bit
of an anomaly to actually rule Russia out in the long term. I
totally accept that there is no question of their joining in the
short term, but should we not be holding out the prospect for
long-term membership because it might do something about the Russian
paranoia which is really riding quite high at the moment?
Professor Hanson: I think Russia finds the EU
particularly annoying, as many other countries do outside the
EU, partly because of the difficulty of negotiating, who do you
deal with and so on, but also I think they have this strong tradition
that the way in which you operate a foreign policy is by deals
with other big powers. Russia wants to be consulted, it does not
want just to be any old candidate for EU membership, it wants
to be somehow on a par, "You should be talking to us and
in particular you, the big European powers, you shouldn't be listening
to little squirts like Poland". It is very much a mindset
which is not really in tune with the way the EU operates.
Professor Cooper: A question I like to ask my
students is, "Why shouldn't Russia join the European Union?"
and then I say, "Make a comparison with Turkey", and
it is quite difficult to answer. The issue here is that Russia
certainly under Putin has made it absolutely clear that it has
absolutely no wish to join the European Union. I think one of
the problems about this relationship is that we started off with
very idealistic views about partnership and co-operation and all
kinds of activities which seemed to be unspoken and behind that
was always the possibility that we might actually one day even
consider Russia as a potential member, so you create mechanisms.
It is like the European neighbourhood policy where again there
is an ambiguity there with all kinds of positive agreements and
so on and so on without explicitly saying, "Yes, you will
be able to join at the end of it", but I think that that
ambiguity has also been present in the way the agreements have
been structured with Russia to date. In my view, any new relationship
replacing the PCA should be one which takes as its absolute starting
point that there is no question for the time being of Russia joining
the European Union. What we need is a constructive relationship,
a framework for a constructive relationship with Russia on all
the issues of mutual interest and there is no need to go into
minute details about everything under the sun which we tend to
do in the agreements we have always had with Russia with the four
common spaces and so on, so I am a great supporter of having a
very simple, focused relationship with Russia and a very simple,
focused agreement, just a kind of framework that would have civilised
debate, dialogue, discussion and action on matters of common interest
and that is all, in my view.
Q86 Lord Lea of Crondall:
Just putting the question from a slightly different point of perspective,
when you meet official delegations from the Duma coming over here
and indeed when one is wandering around St Petersburg on holiday
or whatever, you find enormous patriotism in Russia and horror,
if you follow Western historiographical thinking that Stalin can
be quoted morally with Hitler or something, absolute shock horror,
the immediate identification with the Fatherland and with the
great patriotic war, yet, "Are we Europeans?" Yes. We
all know that we think they are, Shostakovich, Chekov and so on
and all the rest of it, so there is that split personality thing.
If you go to Turkey, which you have mentioned, the agenda is hugely
dominated, hugely, by all the modernisations, economic, social,
political, Kurdistan and so on, all dominated by the prospect
of membership and one perhaps does look for something which is
somewhere between the two. It is not just any old relationship.
You do not need to go back to Napoleon or somebody, but everybody
knows that historically we have always had wars and so on, so
it cannot just be any other country, but you have got to fit the,
"It can't be any other country" point you have made
with the "We don't need to be anything special in an agreement".
They do not quite fit together. Russia is very keen on its line
on Kosovo and Serbia. It is not just any other relationship, is
it?
Professor Hanson: I think that is fair. I think,
first of all, Russian policy-makers and the circles around them
make a distinction between Europe and the EU. They will certainly
say in many respects, "We are European", but the idea
of Russia being simply a member of—
Q87 Lord Lea of Crondall:
I did not mention membership.
Professor Hanson: Okay. I think we are still
casting around for some sort of basis on which to deal with them,
to do business with them, in the broadest sense, political as
well as economic, in a way that fits with their view of where
they should be. They think they are a great power and that they
are back to being a great power. They recognise the supremacy
of the US of course, but they think they are on a par with Europe
rather than on some sort of course to become a part of the EU.
They want to be consulted on things which we do not think non-members
should be involved in which they want to be involved in.
Q88 Lord Lea of Crondall:
How do you do that?
Professor Hanson: I do not think there is an
answer to it. I think there is a complete collision between our
way of looking at things and their way of looking at things.
Q89 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
Could I just pursue for a moment the WTO argument which you introduced.
I thought, but perhaps I am wrong and you will correct me, that
once an entity like the European Union has concluded its bilateral
negotiations with an applicant, that is broadly that, and now
the Americans have done so too. Secondly, surely the question
of, "Do the Russians implement the commitments they undertook?"
is something which is much better pursued after they are members
of the WTO when the whole of the disputes mechanism comes into
play? If, for example, the Russians are misbehaving under the
terms they agreed, then it will be possible to retaliate between
WTO members or to have a disputes settlement panel. Surely, that
is better, is it not, than trying to make out of what presumably
remains a formal legal requirement for the unanimity of the WTO
members to admit Russia, to try and use that as a lever which
I think the Poles seem to be groping for over the meat contest,
but I just wondered whether you would comment on whether, as to
my mind, getting them to the WTO as soon as possible is a sensible
objective.
Professor Cooper: In my view, it is, and I think
it would be a great mistake if the EU did raise WTO issues again
after having concluded a most satisfactory agreement. It seems
to me that that would be wrong. There are individual issues relating
to individual European countries and Russia and the WTO, like
the Scandinavian countries and timber and putting an export tariff
on timber and so on, but that is a separate issue to be dealt
with outside of the formal negotiations between the EU and the
WTO which have formally closed and been agreed. Russia is still
not a member of the WTO and I think it is going to take Russia
still quite a lot longer to join the WTO. Russia is signed off
now with all but two countries. The problem for Russia is that
the longer it drags out, more and more countries join the WTO
and then Russia has to negotiate with them and the latest is Saudi
Arabia and they have almost got an agreement with Saudi Arabia,
and the other one of course is Georgia where Georgia have reopened
the negotiations and Georgia is refusing to sign. The problem
of why Russia is still knocking on the door of the WTO is the
delays in Moscow and particularly now on agriculture where the
Ministry of Agriculture absolutely refuses to accept the level
of subsidy to agriculture which the WTO partners want Russia to
accept and there is a stand-off now. My sense is that even Mr
Putin has difficulty in dealing with a very powerful Ministry
of Agriculture and insists that he make some concessions in order
to sign the multilateral agreement at the final stage, so I think
it may well be the end of next year or even 2009 before Russia
actually joins the WTO, so I do not think it is at all helpful
for the EU to make the process even more difficult than Moscow
makes for itself.
Professor Hanson: I agree with that. On the
technicality of whether in some sense one could reopen questions
about the implementation of bilateral deals, I have never followed
a WTO accession negotiation anywhere near as closely as I have
this current one with Russia, so I do not know what the past experience
has been. What I do see is the Americans, having reached a bilateral
deal with Russia, are keeping on nagging about how they will come
back over the failure to implement the pledges made on intellectual
property rights, so they are treating it that way, whatever the
past precedents may be.
Q90 Lord Hannay of Chiswick:
My question was whether it is in our interests to do so.
Professor Hanson: No, I agree with Julian, I
do not think it is.
Professor Cooper: Otherwise, my perception is
that the Americans are actually being very helpful to Russia at
the moment in trying to overcome the obstacles because I get the
sense that Washington wants Russia to join the WTO as quickly
as possible.
Q91 Lord Swinfen:
Professor Hanson, you were talking a short while ago about the
Russians being a big power, and I think it is. Do you think it
would be happier dealing with individual states rather than the
EU as a whole?
Professor Hanson: I think it manifestly is happier
doing that. I think it is a problem for us and when I say "us",
I mean for the EU as an entity. They clearly find it convenient,
for example, over energy, but the kind of relationships that can
exist between Eon, Ruhrgas and Gazprom, for example, and Gas de
France and Gazprom and so on and so on, those create powerful
interests in those countries which work through the national political
level to facilitate deals with Russia and that is something which
runs completely contrary to what the Competition Directorate of
the Commission is trying to do with energy unbundling. That is
one example of an issue where, if the EU could act in a more unified
way, it would be very helpful, but I think the Russians find it
extremely advantageous to deal with Germany, with France, with
Italy, et cetera, as they tend to do, and very often to create
circumstances which then make it very difficult for a unified
EU policy, as, for example, on energy unbundling, to be implemented.
Q92 Lord Anderson of Swansea:
Yes, Russia may perceive it as in their interests to deal with
a divided Europe. Yes, individual European leaders, Shroeder,
Chirac and perhaps Prime Minister Blair went off on frolics of
their own and were prepared to be divided. Do you detect partly
on Kosovo that there is any greater willingness on the part of
the new generation of European leaders, whether Chancellor Merkel
or Mr Sarkozy who is in Russia at the moment, to seek a greater
solidarity in the face of Russia?
Professor Cooper: I have been watching Mr Sarkozy's
visit with great interest and one senses a special relationship
between Paris and Moscow being established very clearly and a
very, very friendly discussion on all kinds of issues and so on.
Of course many thought that when Mr Berlusconi disappeared from
the scene, Italian-Russian relations would be affected, but they
clearly have not been at all and, if anything, they are even closer.
The only maybe exception to that is Germany, so it does seem to
me that we are in a situation, whether we like it or not, where
individual European powers are going to carry on behaving in this
way, carving out their own separate diplomacy with Moscow, so
I think for the EU that this is going to remain an extremely difficult
issue, possibly with no solution.
Q93 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Given what you have just said about the desire to have these strong
bilateral relationships rather than dealing with the European
Union, the European Union policy on all the things we like talking
about as the great unifiers of European identity, like law, democracy,
human rights, good governance, the growth of civil society, being
nice to women, equal opportunities and all those other things,
do you think that they do have an effect on what is going on in
Russia at any level?
Professor Hanson: I think they have the effect
of irritating people in the Russian establishment beyond measure.
The one thing they do not like is being lectured. Well, there
are quite a few things they do not like!
Q94 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Well, nobody likes being lectured, do they, whatever part of the
world you go to. However, they are not only our very close neighbours,
but a lot of them are over here. They may not like it as an establishment,
but they do not half like coming over and joining in.
Professor Hanson: I think the tradition in Russia
is of a Russian public policy, of seeing things in terms of interest.
They expect us to be acting in our interests, above all, and not
to be driven by something called "value", so anything
we do tends to be taken to be in pursuit of some interest. If
we have been lecturing them about Chechnya in the past or whatever
it might have been, it has always been seen as a ploy to achieve
something else and it is not taken at face value if it is about
democracy and human rights and so on. I am not suggesting that
we should step back on any of those principles, but I think we
will constantly be seen as pursuing much more material interests,
whatever we do or say, and where we need to be quite clear is
that we do not give in on matters like, for example, extradition
of people to whom we have given asylum and things like that. If
we can convey by example and by practice that there really is
a division between the media and the Government in this country
or in any other European countries and a real separation of powers
between the judiciary and the Executive, we just demonstrate that
by not doing the things they want us to do because they think,
"Oh, we (Europeans) will surrender this or that person to
them. We will extradite someone to them because it will help us
in some other way". If we can establish that there really
are limits to this unified view that they have, they think everything
goes together, the Executive, the judiciary, the media, the whole
lot, and that everybody is under the thumb and that we just do
it in a more discreet way, in a more invisible way than they do.
Q95 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
You are academics and you have lots of contacts presumably with
Russian academics and you have spoken very particularly in terms
of the establishment and I imagine that Russian academics are
part of the establishment, but do you have any different sort
of dialogue at your level of contact with people who actually
are quite interested in how the rule of law fits in with the greater
civil society, greater civil freedoms and freedom of speech? Is
that a dialogue going on at least at the academic level?
Professor Hanson: It does go on. I was speaking
with someone who was at one time the Minister of the Economy.
He is an academic now, but before he was an Economy Minister and
he is an absolutely, straight-down-the-line liberal, a political
and economic liberal. You can talk in very straightforward terms,
speaking the same language, with a whole lot of these people.
These people seem to me, and I may be wrong, but my perception
is that they are now completely sidelined politically, they are
marginalised.
Professor Cooper: Over this last year at various
conferences and so on, I have had quite a lot of contact with
not so much academic Russians, but the self-styled political technologists
or spin doctors and so on who are increasingly tough in asserting
pro-Putin values and the whole value structures in Moscow now,
promoting them and ardently defending those, and of course the
key term now is "sovereign democracy". You can argue
it to some extent, but only to a limited extent that the whole
idea of sovereign democracy has arisen partly because of Moscow's
irritation at constantly being berated, lectured and hectored
by the EU and others about human rights, democracy and so on,
so sovereign democracy, as I understand it, basically means, "What
we have in Russia is democracy. It is our democracy appropriate
to Russia and stop interfering in it. Don't interfere in it, it's
ours and this is what we regard as democracy". This is why
I think we see this increasingly common ground on these issues
between China and Russia because it is a shared perception of
both China and Russia, major powers in the world, that, "These
are issues which in a sense are for us at home and not for others
to decide for us or tell us what to do", and, I get the sense,
even with Russia and Iran. Maybe one thing we should be aware
of, I think, is that there may be a growing constituency and what
Putin, I think, is trying deliberately and consciously to promote
is a kind of bloc of major forces in the world who do not accept
the European or Anglo-American view on human rights and democracy
and believes that they have an alternative which is equally viable
and actually more acceptable for their own people. Whilst of course
in the EU we do not in any way play down the value of democracy,
human rights and so on, I think we need to be much more subtle
in the way we get the message over than we have been.
Q96 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
Women—what about women in political life in Russia? I know
that there are loads of doctors wherever you look and there are
loads of academics, but what about them?
Professor Cooper: There has been a major breakthrough
just recently. For the first time ever in Russian history, there
are two ministers in the Russian Government who are women, and
that is a first in Russia.
Q97 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
So they are catching up with a lot of the Arab States?
Professor Cooper: This is the first time in
Russian history they have had two women at once in the same Government.
Q98 Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean:
And at what level?
Professor Cooper: One is the Minister of the
Economy, a replacement for the very liberal German Gref who was
well known in the West, his deputy, Elvira Nabiullina, who is
an extremely capable economist and she is now the Minister and
I think she will be a very good minister. The other one is the
Deputy Finance Minister, Tatiana Golikova, who is now the Minister
for Health and Social Policy. That actually is about the only
good thing one can say about the recent changes with the new Prime
Minister, Mr Zubkov.
Q99 Lord Lea of Crondall:
I am quite astonished. You mentioned the Health Ministry and so
on, but how on earth is it the case, with such marvellous clinics
in St Petersburg and all these places that one goes to, that the
expectation of life is so low or falling or something? Is it just
resources for health? You say people do not want to be lectured
and so on, but can the EU do anything collectively to make some
gesture which would be agreed and accepted by the Russians, like,
"Can we help you with your health system?" in some collective
way? Secondly, is it not in Russia's interests that they do not
get just a bilateral German relationship which is different from
the bilateral French relationship or UK relationship and might
it not be better for them to have a deeper EU relationship?
Professor Hanson: There have been quite a lot
of EU TACIS projects which provided exactly technical assistance
and I have been involved with some of them myself, so it has happened,
but I do not think it has created a big impact on the Russian
political scene, including in the health service, including projects
to improve the delivery of healthcare in particular regions of
Russia.
Professor Cooper: The position of the health
service in Russia, and I think it is true of many of the ex-communist
countries, is that in Soviet times there was the basic provision
of healthcare and so on, not to the best standard by any means,
but at least there was basic provision across the country almost
wherever you lived and you would get some reasonable medical care
and attention. Since the end of communism, what has happened is
that the funding has been severely constrained to strengthen,
develop and modernise that health base, but the new rich and the
wealthy now have private health provision or they go abroad for
health services and so on, so the political constituency to press
for better health for all has been weakened as a result of that
and it is only recently now that the Russian economic situation
has improved that more budget monies are now going into modernising
the health service, but there is a lot to be done there.
Chairman: Professor Cooper and Professor
Hanson, can I, on behalf of the Committee, say how very much we
have appreciated the time you have spent with us this morning.
Can I just add one comment which I cannot normally do with witnesses,
that those of us at this end of the table, including Lord Hannay
who is no longer here, who have had long and close associations
with the University of Birmingham, we are very pleased that our
colleagues have been able to learn this morning what a centre
of excellence the University has in this particular area. Thank
you both very much.
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