On 1 March 2020, the 2015 Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (EPCA) between Kazakhstan and the European Union will officially enter into force, following the completion of its ratification. For the most part it has already been provisionally applied ever since May 2016.

This symbolic benchmark offers an occasion for a retrospective survey of bilateral EU – Kazakhstan relations. They illustrate perfectly well the policies of an emerging middle power such as Kazakhstan trying to harness external support and resources to underpin its own foreign policy aspirations and internal development agenda.

At the outset of Kazakh independence, the country concluded its first Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the European Union in 1995. It contained the classical set of standard provisions. To find a way out from the disastrous economic and social consequences of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan endeavoured to reach out to alternative markets and new sources of investments and technologies. These expectations towards Europe did materialize to a certain extent. In the process, the country got ‘exposed’ to European influence, which was completely independent from what the country intended to do, and, more intriguingly, equally independent from anything like a conscious European plan for influence.

The regulatory influence the EU projected at the time was the expected result from the fact that doing business with the largest internal market in the world required the partner country to adopt standards determined by European regulations. The nascent and vibrant civil society—very similar to parallel movements in Eastern Europe—wholeheartedly embraced the rights and freedoms proclaimed by the EU Treaties. For a time, on the eve of Kazakhstan’s OSCE Chairmanship in 2010, government and society seemed to head in the same direction, down the ‘Path to Europe’ State Program, a comprehensive reform plan, mostly liberal in nature. The European identity was not called into question in the internal debate on the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society in Kazakhstan. However, in 2011 the completion of that program was announced; in other words, it was abandoned.

It is difficult to gauge to what extent European values became internalized by Kazakhstan in the turbulent years of the transition towards modernity. The role of exports to Europe and of investment from that continent was substantial, particularly in the extracting and exporting of natural resources, primarily crude oil, but also uranium, other precious metals, grain and phosphates. The EU has roughly a 40 per cent share of the country’s external trade in goods and commodities and provides approximately half of the investment influx.

However, this did not make the European Union an influential factor in terms of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy priorities. In 1992, when Prof. Omerserik Kassenov, head of the presidential think tank, Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, drew for the first time the ’circles of the country’s priorities’, Europe ranked fifth in importance. The EU preserved that same place in the 2014 Foreign Policy Concept, the first public document the government has produced on the topic.

In the autumn of 2011, when the mandate for the EU negotiating team for a new Agreement with Kazakhstan was being elaborated in Brussels, both the Commission and the Council were navigating in unchartered waters. The new Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement was to be very close, almost identical with the template of an EU Association Agreement, but short of the prospect of joining the Union, unlike the options offered to participants in the Eastern Partnership. Geography proved to be decisive criterion, resulting in substantial difference in the EU’s treatment of, for instance, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan—two otherwise very similar oil producing countries with a majority Turkic language speaking Muslim population. The most important negotiation tool of the European Union, conditionality, was missing from the negotiation team’s briefcase.

In turn, Kazakhstan’s representatives felt very comfortable during the four years of negotiations over the EPCA, acting in the framework of their much-lauded ‘multi-vector foreign policy’, navigating external pressures of various types. There were surely limits to Kazakhstan’s freedom of geopolitical manoeuvre, but Kazakhstan, unlike Georgia for instance, sought neither European Union nor NATO membership. The process unfolded against the background of the emerging Eurasian Economic Union, proposed by Kazakhstan’s first president Nazarbayev in a speech at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1994, and the Belt and Road Initiative, announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September  2013 in a speech at the Nazarbayev University in Astana.

The EU and Kazakhstan signed their Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement in December 2015. The EPCA became the main document framing EU-Kazakhstan relations in 29 key policy areas, such as political dialogue, human rights, energy, transport, the environment and climate change, employment and social affairs, culture, education and research. In addition, EPCA set the legal framework for cooperation in areas that were not provided for in the 1995 Agreement. These include security in space, countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, civil service cooperation, healthcare, public finance management, and taxation, among others.

From a broader perspective, ensuring a level playing field for business proved to be key, notably by enhancing the transparency of public procurement in infrastructure, including through accession to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement. Later, in January 2020, an additional impetus to combat corruption became Kazakhstan’s participation in GRECO, the Group of States against Corruption.

In the absence of EU accession as an end goal, the government of Kazakhstan identified membership in the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as the overarching national objective in its Strategy Kazakhstan 2050. In 2015, it embarked on a Country Programme, funded by the European Union and aimed at supporting Kazakhstan’s national reforms across several policy areas. Kazakhstan has set itself ambitious targets for achieving strong, green and inclusive growth. It aims to become one of the 30 most developed countries in the world by mid-century, while shifting from a resource-intensive growth model to one that is cleaner, more innovative and more diversified.

Incidentally, among the flagship programmes completed by the EU in 2018 was the Supporting Kazakhstan’s transition to a Green Economy Model, which contributed to a more long-term sustainable and diverse economic development of Kazakhstan.

The record of EU-Kazakhstan relations clearly indicates that the country aspires to a different international image transcending its traditional descriptions as an ex-Soviet state, or even as a leading Central Asian country or ‘bridge’ between East and West. Kazakhstan has sought recognition as a multi-dimensional, world-class player with a modernized economy and society.

Recently, the Kazakh capital hosted the presentation of the so-called "Letter from Nur-Sultan". It is part of the Capitals Series by Carnegie Europe. The Letter, prepared by Dr Murat Laumulin, Chief Research Fellow of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, illustrates the persistent attempt by Kazakhstan to perceive the future evolution of its relations with the EU closely intertwined with the effective implementation of the EU Strategy for Central Asia in its latest, 2019 version.

One reason for the regional approach is that Kazakhstan is no longer eligible for the bilateral parts of the Development Cooperation Instrument since it gained upper-middle-income-country status in 2014, but it continues to have access to the regional programmes.

The message from Nur Sultan starts with the recommendation that the EU could be much more focused when it comes to development assistance. It could concentrate, for example, on those areas in which the EU most excels and for which it is most admired: culture, education, and regional cooperation. In a nutshell, the new strategy cannot remain a declaration of intent; it must be implemented concretely in the uneasy geopolitical context of the region.

With the rise of China, Russia’s attempts to regain influence if not control in the region, and the waning of U.S. interest, it is not clear to what extent and how the EU will exert its geopolitical influence in Central Asia. This is because the EU fails to conceptualise an overarching Eurasian dimension. This would mean identifying cooperative ventures reaching across several regions into the wider Eurasian area.

"The EU needs a more assertive strategy”, insists the Letter by Dr Laumulin. This would entail shifting from a simple, general dialogue with the target country, based on ideas and principles, to a more meaningful dialogue based on explicit criteria for implementing those ideas and principles. This game could be made more sophisticated by turning soft power—where Europe is stronger—into a geopolitical asset.

It seems the times of the Great Game may be coming back to Central Asia, as elsewhere in the world. Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian countries appreciate EU’s ability to engage on a non-exclusive basis without imposing binary choices. The EU does not aim to be a geostrategic player in the region, but circumstances may nevertheless compel it to seek a greater and more visible role.

Dr. Kamen Velichkov

Lecturer on European Integration, Jean Monnet Chair, Eurasian National University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

04 February 2020 / 12:14