Brief overview of relations

“Being the largest geopolitical entities on the European continent, Russia and the EU are interdependent in many spheres, linked by their common civilization roots, culture, history, and future. The agenda of our interaction is multidimensional and covers various sectors. We are willing to enhance it – on the basis, of course of equality and mutual benefit”

(Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, extract from an article published in the “Diplomatic Yearbook 2010”) 

The Russian Federation and the European Union are major partners in a number of key spheres, including economy, energy, internal and external aspects of security.

The annual turnover between Russia and the EU member states currently exceeds 200bn euros (this figure had tripled between 2000 and 2008 and, after a noticeable drop in 2009 resulting from the global financial and economic crisis, is rapidly recovering). In recent years Russia became the third trade partner of the EU after the US and China. More than half of Russian foreign trade turnover and two thirds of cumulative foreign investments in Russian economy fall to the EU's share. The EU is the main importer of Russian energy resources, and Russia firmly holds the position of the biggest supplier of natural gas to the EU, satisfying the overall demand for it in EU member states by a quarter, and remains the second most important exporter of crude oil and oil products to the EU.

People-to-people and professional contacts as well as tourism are becoming increasingly active. In many respects this is an immediate result of the implementation of the Russia-EU Agreements on visa facilitation and readmission, which came into force on 1 June 2007.

Cooperation between Russia and the European Union progressively strengthens in foreign policy and security issues, in combating illegal migration, organised crime and terrorism. The full potential of Russia-EU interaction in these and other spheres is still to be realised, but the main achievement of recent years, which can be hardly overestimated, is the understanding increasingly gaining ground that partnership between Russia and the EU is one of the cornerstones of maintaining stability and prosperity not only in Europe, but world-wide. Joint responsibility for finding responses to present-day challenges as well as solid and mainly positive foundations of traditional, sometimes centuries-old relations with individual EU member states, common principles and ideals of European civilization, similarity of our historical destinies - all this shapes a genuinely strategic character of the Russia-EU partnership.

The history of official relations between Moscow and Brussels counts a little over 20 years. The very first document regulating the relations between the then Soviet Union - and later Russia as its continuator state - and the EU was the Agreement on Trade and Commercial and Economic Cooperation between the USSR, on the one hand, and the European Communities, on the other, signed on 18 December 1989. At that time it was only about the establishment of cooperation. The Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, signed four and half years later, on 24 June 1994, became a significant step forward as it provided for the development of enhanced relations in the political sphere, trade and economy, in legal and humanitarian areas. The next milestone in the Russia-EU relations was the endorsement at the Summit in St.Petersburg in May 2003 of the concept of four Common spaces: a Common Economic Space, a Common Space of Freedom, Security and Justice, a Common Space of External Security and a Common Space of Research and Education, including Cultural Aspects. The implementation of the so-called Road Maps for these Common spaces, adopted at the Summit in Moscow in May 2005, remains a key track of interaction between Russia and the EU.

At their Summit in London in October 2005 Russia and the EU stated the necessity to renew the legal foundation, which was no longer matching the ambition of creating the four Common Spaces and in general no longer reflected the level of cooperation achieved. At the following Summit in Sochi in May 2006 the parties reached a political agreement to start work on a new basic document, aimed at filling with additional specific substance the very idea of the strategic partnership and establishing effective mechanisms of its implementation. Negotiations on the future agreement launched in 2008 continue.

The relationship between Russia and the EU is supported by a well established institutional architecture that enables the two sides to discuss at different levels practically all problems of today's world. The existing formats of the Russia-EU cooperation include summits with the participation of the President of the Russian Federation, on the one side, and the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, on the other; meetings between the Russian Government and the European Commission; sessions of the Permanent Partnership Council at Foreign Ministers' level and in other specific sectoral configurations (including justice and home affairs, energy, transport, science and technologies, etc.); meetings at Political Directors' level; regular meetings between the Permanent Representative of Russia to the EU and the Chairman of the EU Political and Security Committee. Interaction intensifies in the format of sectoral dialogues (including in such fields as energy, transport, industrial policy, information society, space) and expert consultations on foreign policy issues (more than 20 meetings per year). Meetings between members of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation and the European Parliament take place on a regular basis.

Specific tasks for the nearest future aimed at strengthening the strategic partnership between Russia and the EU are determined by the very logic of development of relations with the European Union. They include transition to a visa-free regime, establishment of a more effective and result-oriented interaction in the sphere of foreign policy, including in crisis management, launch of a dialogue on the "coupling" of concepts of economic and social development in Russia and the EU until 2020. In the context of overcoming the negative impact of the global financial and economic crisis the initiative, endorsed at the 25th Russia-EU Summit in Rostov-on-Don on 31 May - 1 June 2010, to establish a "Russia-EU Partnership for modernisation" acquires special significance. This partnership is designed to serve as a flexible framework for promoting reform, enhancing growth and raising competitiveness in Russia and the EU. Its priority areas include expanding opportunities for investment in key sectors driving growth and innovation, enhancing and deepening bilateral trade and economic relations, promoting alignment of technical regulations and standards, advancing sustainable low-carbon economy and energy efficiency, enhancing cooperation in innovation and research, promoting people-to-people links, and enhancing dialogue with civil society and business community. At the 26th Russia-EU Summit in Brussels on 7 December 2010 the sides launched a Rolling Work Plan for activities within the “Partnership for modernisation”. 

The discussion on two major Russian initiatives on developing a Treaty on European Security and a new legal basis for international cooperation in the energy field, as well as the joint proposal by Russia and Germany to establish a Russia-EU Committee on External Policy and Security (the Meseberg memorandum) already launched with the EU continue in the spirit of strategic partnership.