EU's Inter-Regional and Trans-Regional Relations

The European Union is a functionalist, neo functionalist and an inter-governmental institution, in which subsequent waves of cooperation lead to a strong economic and political integration. The initial focus of the member states was on the Brussels-based bureaucratic structures. The main priorities of the European Union are protecting citizens' freedom and developing a strong, well built, vibrant economic base, building a climate free, green and social Europe. After the European Coal and Steel Community was established in 1952, its successor, the European Union, became a special regional organization which became a role model for every regional organization around the world. European Union-type settlement mechanisms, general secretariats with agenda-setting power, and parliamentary assemblies. These conditions are, in large, owed by other regional organizations to the success of the European Union and its encouragement and promotion of integration in other parts of the world as well. The European Union actively encourages regionalism through financial, economic and technical assistance as well as via the negotiation of interregional agreements European Union had taken a lot of measurements in world countries affairs even by the time when it was not a fully-fledged international actor, this policy has certainly helped the Union to make a more significant impact abroad. In the past decade, the European Union has launched 24 civilian and military operations, ranging from peacekeeping to rule of law missions. It has not only been active in its ‘region’, but also in countries as remote as Congo, Somalia and Afghanistan. While several of these operations were relatively small-scale it still had an operation in different parts of the world.

 The European union had a different phase of inter and trans regional relation and many turning points that shaped its foreign policy. The 2008 global financial crisis had a great influence on EU-Chinese relations, on the basis of mutual benefit as well as competition. While the EU has a pragmatic alliance with China in the field of trade, scientific cooperation, and sustainable development, it also has a troubled relation regarding human rights of Xinjiang, the question for democracy of Taiwan and Hong Kong, and the Belt and road initiative  OBOR project of China. The EU comes against gross human right abuses and bans products made by forced labor while China considers this to be its internal issue.  Their trade relations has also been raptured with the covid 19.EU as an institution wants to protect its member countries economic welfare and sovereignty. Whereas, China is on the verge of becoming the world's hegemony let alone regional hegemon, Chinas having a divide and rule strategy by demanding to have an affair with Central and East European countries((Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) and 5 Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro) makes EU uncomfortable. As the president of the European commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, said “China is a negotiating partner, an economic competitor and a systematic rival” for the current state of the EU.

The EU has a sophisticated relationship with Eurasian countries. Eurasia is the union of soviet socialist republics (USSR), which disintegrated into its constituent parts on December 26,1991. The post-soviet states minus the Baltics are now generally referred to as Eurasia to denote that geographic fact that they spread across in the two continents. This Eurasia region has a significant geopolitical, security and economic importance to the European union and its member states. While Eurasia maintains a numerous regional agreement with overlapping membership. Being Russia the dominant state of Eurasia, accounting for 76 percent of the regional gross domestic product, other those region states also have a need for regionalism taking the states common past into consideration. Beside extensive trading networks and a connected infrastructure like regional roads, railways, pipelines, electricity grids and a single currency the nostalgia of soviet as one of the driving reasons is a bit not compatible with EU since it is used by authoritarian regimes to increase their legitimacy. These states are a rare example of “plutocratic” regional agreements, where the smaller members delegate policymaking not to a supranational body as in the EU but to the richest member, Russia.

Another prominent inter regional relation of the European Union is its relation with the Russian Federation. Russia is between east and west. Some of its citizens want to be westerners whereas others claim Russia to be a unique and distinct civilization completely different from the western world. The relationship between the European Union is not aimed at making Russia a member country of the EU but seeks to develop cooperation in politics, economy and cultural realm. Russia and the European Union started to have a lawful relationship under inter regional integration after the 1994 partnership and cooperation agreement. In one of the several summits they designed four spaces such as common economic space, common space of freedom, security, and justice, common space on external security and common space on research education and culture. The European Union is by far Russia’s first trading partner, whereas Russia is European Unions fifth trading partner. Energy dominates much of the trade relations between the European Union and Russia. There is an European Union interest to address specific economic issues, including Russia’s protectionist policy and its partial ban on European Union agricultural food products. A liberal approach to inter regional relations presupposes liberal democracy and advanced market economy. Countries or regional organizations with different domestic coalitions could generate some hardships regarding economic and trade relationships. For instance, a country with a policy which revolves around attract beneficiaries of economic openness such as export intensive sectors, oriented towards an open global economic and technical system, consumers of imported products, competitive agricultural sectors and bureaucracies center to economic reform is most likely to struggle to create a sentimental economic integration with a country with a policy of attract import competing firms, banks closely tied to the state, state owned enterprises, state bureaucracies rendered obsolete by reform, civic nationalist, ethnic and religious movements threatened by internationalization or Europeanization. This is the exact illustration of the inter-regional relation between the European Union and Russia. The EU and Russia implement numerous projects in the field of environmental protection , climate action and energy efficiency, for example protecting the Baltic sea region from pollution, modernization of heating systems in schools and hospitals, and the promotion of sustainable transport in EU-Russia cross border.

Merkel's departure and Brexit process almost mark the end of the European understanding of value and welfare. This does not mean that the European Union has fallen down from its position of a special organization, but it is a fact that less wealth carries more problems. It encounters not a single problem, but many problems erupting from everywhere. These problems lead to the testing of the Copenhagen criteria, which the European Union builds on legal and moral values. As in the refugee issue, the European Union falls into a great dilemma, although the elderly population is increasing and the young population, that is, the working population is decreasing, as in Germany, but it is obvious that there is a need for qualified personnel to replace them. For this, Germany receives qualified refugees, but this is against the principles on which the European Union is built.

The European Court of Human Rights, which has a supervisory and judicial function; does not punish or only gives minor warnings to Greece, which intervenes harshly with refugees for border security purposes. The criticized policy of the EU, the fact that there is no reaction from the European Union Parliament, because Europe, like Greece, Italy and Spain, is on a migration route. If Greece accepts, how can Europe ensure the security of Europe? If we look at the security understanding of the countries, the reason behind it could be that the people entering the country may be members of terrorist organizations, their education levels and traditional cultures may create an atmosphere of conflict in the country. For this reason, their actions are ignored because the security of the European Union starts from Greece. This is not the only problem, the unfavorable reflection of the UK's exit from the European Union (Brexit process) has been on the balance of power. Already the purpose of England's entry into the union was to examine the structure and course of the organization, but now it thinks that the function is over and only a legal burden. Two problems arose, however, with Britain's exit. The first is that Scotland stays in the European Union, but this brings some responsibilities to trade, which is against England's laws and independence. Secondly, with the exit of England, the power politics of the European Union changed. Britain was balancing France and Germany, but with its exit, it became impossible for France to balance Germany economically. The state with a strong economy will have more say in the structure because it can provide large fund aids to other countries, but France wants to take Italy with it to balance, but this seems a bit difficult because Italy does not have such a potential. struggling with the inability of a strong political figure to come to power. The dispute between the Italian and French states over the refugee issue, which took place a short time ago, had stretched the ropes between the two countries. Returning to a France-centered problem, France was worried about the security of Europe, the security of the European continent after the Second World War was felt by the US-based NATO, but it is obvious that it would be a bit of a wrong policy to rely on NATO's security in the event of a possible war. For this reason, after Emmanuel Macron's statement that "NATO has been brain dead", the issues of whether the European Union is establishing an army or should it be an issue were a discussion topic. It is a fact that the USA does not take kindly to this because the USA does not want to lose its arms market and Europe's dependency. It does not seem easy for the European Union to achieve this because building an army is an additional financial burden, the need to have both time and technological competence to make powerful weapons. Germany's heavy industry is efficient to meet this, but Germany's expansionist policy in the Second World War is an issue and they are determined not to make the same mistake for the third time, which is engraved in the memories and political cultures of the USA, France, England and Russia. Another biggest threat to the European Union is Russia. Although it was surrounded by NATO countries, the actual Russian occupation of Ukraine made other countries disturbed. War is so costly and a huge casualty, but it aims at natural gas as a geopolitical and economic weapon against the embargoes of the European Union. Interruptions in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline are causing an energy crisis in the European Union. There is no industry where there is no energy. Of course, weapons and military equipment sent to Ukraine means additional financial burden. COVID 19, which started in 2019, had upset the world supply chain, then the start of the Ukraine war in 2022, the energy crisis put Europe in a pinch, because it will indirectly cause the food crisis and will return to Europe as a refugee problem.

To conclude the current state of European foreign and security policy and its inter and trans regional relations European Unions policies aimed at taming nationalism by protecting human rights, democracy and the rule of law as key prerequisites for prosperity. The European Union has a wide variety of inter and trans regional relations with different state and regional organizations. İt has been the special institution model to every inter regional organization around the world. The displeasing situation it faces with some countries and regional institutions such as Russia, China, Eurasia, and NATO as we briefly stated above are pushing the boundaries of the European Union and how they will be controlled is controversial and unpredictable. Besides, the recent crises in the European Union have tainted outsiders’ perceptions of it as a model of specific policy regimes; moreover, the most fundamental problem has taken shape in Brexit, which expressed principled opposition to the prime idea of regional cooperation. Nevertheless, the understanding that regional integration can help nation states to secure peace and enhance economic prosperity continues to be the most leading notion embraced by the European Union, remaining as a special one in the world.