20/10/2006
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy, The European Union and Central Asia – Building a 21st Century Partnershi. L.N. Gumilyev Eurasian National University, Astana, 17 October 2006
                       
Thank you for this invitation, and I am deeply honoured to be here. I know there’s a long line of highly distinguished guests who have addressed this university before me. I would like to thank the Rector in particular for his kindness in hosting today’s event.

You are, I’m sure, very proud of this University and its facilities, and rightly so. The Eurasian National University in many ways reflects Kazakhstan itself: young, full of promise, and already attracting serious attention on the world stage.

And of course at the heart of it all are your students, who I know come from all regions of this country, young scholars continuing the tradition of brilliant scholarship embodied by the university’s namesake, Lev Gumilyev. I am sure many in the audience today will go on to be future leaders of Kazakhstan, making the country proud of them, and the fine educational institution that produced them.

I was highly impressed as I came into Astana this morning with the rapid developments that have taken place. Sights like the Baiterek Tower and the Pyramid of Peace and Harmony, are remarkable achievements. And I know that the vibrancy in Astana reflects that of Kazakhstan as a whole.

Indeed, Kazakhstan’s economic development since independence has been a great achievement – thanks to economic reforms and high quality financial services. And of course you have positioned yourselves well on the world stage, providing a model of statesmanship and restraint in renouncing your nuclear capability. In today’s troubled times we are reminded once again of the significance of Kazakhstan’s decision, and what the world owes you as a result.

This is my first visit to Kazakhstan, and to this region, since becoming the European Union’s Commissioner for External Relations. But I can assure you it won’t be my last.

The European Union is now waking up to the importance of Kazakhstan and Central Asia as a whole. We are two regions with a great deal in common, whose interests are intertwined, and who should have much deeper and more developed relations. Thanks to the EU’s latest enlargement, you are now closer to the EU. The European Union has realised there’s a serious strategic gap in our relations, and we are now beginning to make major efforts to address that gap.

The first evidence of that shift in emphasis is the intensification of political contacts between us. Only last month Foreign Minister Tokaev visited Brussels, and now following my visit, President Nazarbayev will be visiting Brussels in December.

We are also in the process of developing a paper about our relations with Central Asia, which we expect to finalise by the end of this year. In the first half of next year Germany will hold the EU’s presidency, and they’ve already announced that relations with Central Asia will be a priority.

So this is the beginning of a new era.

You may already be aware of the European Neighbourhood Policy, the EU’s foreign policy instrument designed to help our direct neighbours to our east and south come closer to the EU and benefit from our area of stability, security and prosperity.

It contains many attractive elements, like a stake in our internal market, and participation in EU networks and programmes. We are currently thinking about how we could make some of these elements available to our neighbours’ neighbours, who demonstrate a real commitment to implement genuine democratic and economic reforms. We hope Kazakhstan would be one of those who could benefit.

In fact this is part of a more differentiated approach by the EU – we want to see our partners not only as part of a region, but also as individual countries with specific needs and a unique relationship with the EU.

Some countries in Central Asia have chosen to isolate themselves, and make it harder for us and the international community to work with them. But that should not mean that we downgrade our relations with every country in the region. On the contrary, we should be able to respond to each individual situation, adapting the intensity of relations according to each partner country’s situation.

Kazakhstan is a very important partner for the European Union in Central Asia. And we’re an important partner for you, we’re now Kazakhstan’s first trading and investment partner. We want to help you build on your positive economic performance, expand our bilateral trade relations and support your government’s efforts to diversify the economy.

Kazakhstan aspires to be among the world’s 50 most competitive countries – an admirable ambition, and one the European Union would like to help you achieve. We have built up considerable know-how about transition processes, not least thanks to our latest enlargement. We put this know-how at your disposal and encourage you to make use of it. One example is the EU expert exchange facility we are about to establish, which we hope will make a very positive contribution to Kazakhstan’s development.

But there are many other areas in which we can and should cooperate more, given the great number of interests we share. We very much want to develop the human dimension of our relationship by increasing the range and number of contacts between Kazakhs and Europeans. That means businessmen, academics, and above all, students and young people. I very much believe that it is essential that we invest in the youth, after all, the future of our relations lies in your hands.

More and more young Kazakhs are choosing to study in the European Union, and we want to encourage still more to do so. In 2007 we will provide more fellowships to young people from across this region to study in Europe. The experience this gives people of building friendships and understanding how different societies function, is invaluable. Student exchanges more than anything else cement good relations between nations.

And education is one of the most important areas for investment – those nations which continually improve their human capacity are those which consistently perform best across all development indicators. The European Union stands ready to increase its assistance to Kazakhstan across the educational spectrum.

I hope many of you in the audience today have already benefited or will benefit in the future from our reinforced programme of educational exchanges.

There are three other areas where we should also focus on boosting our cooperation:

1) Energy

Kazakhstan’s enormous reserves of oil and gas make it a highly attractive partner for the EU. And of course Kazakhstan needs reliable partners like the EU to provide stable markets for its products.

Our challenge is to develop a mutually beneficial partnership through dialogue between energy producers, transit countries and consumers. We hope we will go some way towards achieving this when President Nazarbayev visits Brussels in December. We want to use that occasion to take the first steps towards a truly strategic energy partnership.

An important part of the equation is the transport of energy supplies, and there we hope Kazakhstan will provide strong political support for the development of the Transcaspian - Trans Black Sea energy transit corridor and for the Odessa-Brody-Plock pipeline. Diversifying important routes in this way will enhance the EU’s security of supply whilst simultaneously contributing towards higher export prices for Kazakhstan and other producers.

The EU can also offer economic know-how and expertise to help Kazakhstan avoid the worst effects of Dutch Disease, which we know can turn natural resource wealth into more of a curse than a blessing. We very much support further efforts by your government to diversify the economy and make it less dependent upon the energy sector. We stand ready to assist Kazakhstan’s leaders in making the most of this precious, but limited resource, and mitigating the economic harms it can bring.

Another important dimension will be ensuring transparency of revenues from oil and gas, to ensure there is no doubt about the equity of the distribution of the country’s revenues. In Kazakhstan 20 percent of the population is still living below the poverty line, and it is vital for the country’s future that the revenues from its enormous mineral wealth are used to set it on the path to a brighter future for all citizens.

But of course energy is one of several areas where bilateral cooperation can only go so far. To maximise the benefits for everyone, there needs to be good regional cooperation. For the future it will be important to work towards the progressive creation of an integrated Central Asian energy market, which could also be integrated with the South Caucasus market. We have already been promoting this idea through our “Baku Initiative” for enhancing energy and transport cooperation between the EU, Black Sea and Caspian regions. We hope the Ministerial conference on energy between the EU, Black Sea and Caspian region states in Astana on 30 November will be another milestone in this process.

2) Border management, Drugs and HIV/AIDS

The second area where we believe enhanced EU-Kazakh can be mutually beneficial is in tackling drug trafficking, and the related health crisis of HIV/AIDS.

The Commission has for some time been working with Kazakhstan and other countries in the region to better control the trafficking of illicit drugs and drug precursors. We are supporting the Central Asia Drugs Action Plan (CADAP) and a programme to enhance border management in Central Asia (BOMCA), which we hope will help fight common threats of terrorism, illegal migration, trafficking in human beings and in drugs.

But we would like to step up our cooperation to focus in particular on the health implications of drug trafficking. It is well known that countries affected by drug trafficking also face increased levels of drug use along those drug trafficking routes. And where drug users are stigmatised and do not have access to health services, the risk of infection and other drug-related harms increases dramatically.

We know this is a matter of considerable concern for the government of Kazakhstan, and for other governments in the region, so we are determined to step up the level of our assistance. We will in the future look to increasing our cooperation with the Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; boosting our support for harm reduction services; and working to ensure the basic rights of all citizens are protected.

3) Security and democratic reforms

The European Union is as concerned as governments in the region by the spread of radical doctrines and their potential to destabilise the region. But we firmly believe that the answer is creating economic prosperity and a solid basis of political and civil rights. That is why we very much encourage governments to move in the direction of further democratisation and political reform.

Kazakhstan has made clear its desire to hold the OSCE Presidency in 2009, which I believe is a laudable ambition. OSCE Presidencies must, however, uphold the values of the organisation, and be seen to hold the civil and political rights of their citizens in the highest regard.

For that reason, we are hoping for signals from the highest level in Kazakhstan that the necessary political reforms, for example to the media and electoral laws and to the Constitution, will be carried out in the coming year. We would very much like to support Kazakhstan’s OSCE Presidency bid; it is high time, 15 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union for a Central Asian country to hold the Presidency. But that cannot be at the expense of the OSCE’s core values. We hope that Kazakhstan takes the initiative and shows us that it will be a Presidency we can be proud of.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

There are many more issues I could address, like our interest in supporting education exchanges and deepening our cooperation to benefit from Kazakhstan’s cultural richness and multi-ethnic society.

But I will leave those for our discussion. For now, let me close with the thought that Kazakhstan is a very important partner for the EU in Central Asia. We count on you to assist us in promoting greater regional cooperation in this region, to deal with the many issues like water and border management which have to be dealt with on a regional level. We want to develop better bilateral relations with each country, especially Kazakhstan, and an important element of our relationship will continue to be our work at regional level.

As for the young students in the hall today, I have one thought for you. As Abai, the great Kazakh poet wrote, “I call on young hearts to have high aspirations; I put the humanity on top of all things.” I am sure you will live up to his exhortation and make your country proud of you!

Thank you.