The integration of Russia into united Europe is an extremely difficult task from both theoretical and practical points of view. The issue is not even that Russia is a country that has unleashed a major war in the 21st century with hundreds of thousands of victims and signs of genocide (even Nazi Germany aside, it is worth bearing in mind that Serbia, which waged bloody wars in the Balkans only three decades ago, is a candidate for EU membership). And it is not that Russia is not exclusively a European country with most of its territory in Asia: Turkey, which is also already recognised as a candidate and with which accession negotiations have been going on for more than half a century, has a much smaller part of its territory in Europe. It is also not that the country is ruled by a dictatorship which relies on intelligence services — it seems to be not a problem at all, as Spain became an EEC member 10 years after the death of Franco and Greece — only seven years after the Regime of the Colonels was overthrown. And the problem is not even that Russia remains the last colonial empire in the world and suppresses the subjugated peoples’ aspirations to freedom and self-expression — should we recall French Algeria and Senegal or Belgian Congo, which were colonies of these European metropoles at the time — and even after — the latter signed the 1957 Treaty of Rome17? Rather, the problem is that Russia is not perceived by Europeans as a country acting according to European canons. This is the real issue: Russia does not indeed behave like a modern civilized state waging wars, confiscating foreign property, destabilizing third countries’ sovereign authorities, and supporting extremists and terrorists of all sorts. Meanwhile, Russians are not trying to prevent this — not only are there no preconditions for revolutions like the ones in Portugal or Greece in modern Russia, but there have not even been protests like those that took place in Yugoslavia, Turkey, Belarus, and Georgia. And if Europeans know that their values are shared only by those Russians who are fleeing the country by the millions in search of asylum, why integrate those who remain?
17 — Of the six countries that signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957, which initiated European integration, four had overseas territories at the time of signing (see: Eklund, Hanna. “Peoples, Inhabitants and Workers: Colonialism in the Treaty of Rome” / The European Journal of International Law, 2023, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 831-854.
There is only one answer to this perfectly fair question: the creation of “big Europe” in the 21st century is dictated by the same goals as that of “small Europe” in the middle of the 20th century: the goals of security and economic prosperity. Russia, involved in joint European politics, will cease to be a threat to other European countries, as Germany ceased to be, and Russia’s resources will provide potential opportunities for the entire European bloc’s more balanced development. Of course, here and below we discuss post-Putin Russia.
Russia’s integration into the EU is not a question of restoring historical justice, as it may be considered in the case of Poland or the Czech Republic; it is about calculating benefits and costs for both Europeans and Russians. It is a pure “marriage of convenience” with the hope that the partners who have known each other since “kindergarten” will create a strong and prosperous union despite a series of previous quarrels and grudges.
The importance of Russia’s integration into the EU (or another structure that could play a similar role — we will discuss this in more detail later) is determined by several circumstances. First of all, it solves the security problem mentioned above — the anticipated threat on the eastern borders and the need to defend against it is a risk factor and the cause of huge costs and/ or losses. Besides, unification is economically beneficial, as there are no countries or territories on the EU’s edges comparable to Russia in terms of natural resources, human potential; and market size, and relying even on trustworthy, but geographically distant and politically independent partners is becoming increasingly risky. Finally, this large-scale project changes the geopolitical positioning of the EU: the bloc becomes the largest subject of world politics, acquires the most powerful nuclear potential and army, and the value of the euro as a world currency comes close to the U. S. dollar. It is likely that in such a scenario the internal mechanisms of the Union’s functioning may change, but integration will receive a strong new impetus.
There is, however, one difficulty looming over all this: the “pendulum” nature of Russian history and the lessons of the late twentieth century obviously do not suggest that even if the Russian political regime changes, Moscow will automatically and eagerly join the queue for membership and spend decades fulfilling the long list of membership preconditions. We are not suggesting that the EU should offer Russia membership itself (such an option is not envisaged by European regulations anyway) — but it could announce that post-Putin Russia’s application, if any, would be processed under a special procedure. This may make the Kremlin present a deliberate misinterpretation, and to counteract its effects, it would be sufficient to conduct a detailed investigation of Russian crimes in Ukraine in advance, condemn the Russian high-ranked officials and military commanders responsible for the aggression, genocide of Ukrainian citizens, etc. in absentia, and define their extradition as one of the conditions for Russia’s application (in addition, another prerequisite for Russia’s membership could be compliance with the Magnitsky Act aimed at punishing human rights offenders on Russian territory). Such conditions seem sufficient to us: they would be a direct indication that Europe does not consider the entire Russian population responsible for the war unleashed by the Kremlin, nor does it intend to discriminate against them; instead it clearly identifies the barrier that lies in Russia’s path to Europe. In our opinion, such a declaration would have a huge transformative effect on Russian society, indicating that not Europeans but the Russian authorities are the main obstacle to the country’s accession to Western civilization.
As Russians, we must emphasize how important the symbolism of such a declaration would be. Over the decades-long communist era, the world has developed an image of people who live behind the Iron Curtain, who want to overcome it, and who are restrained from doing so by their own government. In Russia, no such restrictions have existed since the late 1980s, but since then the curtain has been maintained from the other side. As the EU has expanded, the scope of visa-free travel for Russians in Europe shrunk — and Russian authorities have consistently used this argument as evidence that Europe does not consider Russia to be part of it. The Kremlin even tried to initiate negotiations on a visa-free regime, but did not find understanding on the part of the Europeans, which, in our opinion, did not upset the Russian regime at all. By declaring an “open door” on their part, the Europeans could “reenact” R. Reagan’s appeal to M. Gorbachev: “Tear down this wall!” thus declaring that the only obstacle to peoples’ unification is the policy of the Russian government (and this government itself, which now consists of war criminals).
We see no reason why the EU would not be able to admit Russia as a member if the future Russian authorities sign and ratify the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and recognize the EU Court of Justice’s full jurisdiction on its territory. The special feature of Russia’s case can be the timing: whereas during the usual procedure a country is bound by many obligations arising from the expected membership at the early stage of obtaining candidate status, Russia could be admitted to EU membership with a definite delayed timetable for acquiring certain rights and taking up certain obligations. We have no illusions about how quickly Russia and Europe could be fully reconciled — we believe it would take at least a decade — but we are convinced that Russia cannot be reformed in a European way if the reformer itself remains an external force imposing certain conditions: this was precisely the reason the last attempt at rapprochement failed. Russia and its people need a largescale “advance payment,” which they will be glad to “work off” later. To some extent a similar approach — albeit, we would say, on a tactical, not strategic level — was applied to Bulgaria and Romania, which still had unfulfilled integration requirements at the time of their formal admission to the EU, but their adjustment to the Union’s norms was quite successful, and the pressure of the European institutions on the local governments was quite effective.
We do not believe that there are insurmountable obstacles on this path, such as the denazification that Germany required after its defeat in WW2. Although V. Putin has succeeded in building a fascist-type corporate state in Russia [42], it still lags far behind the Third Reich, and if historical analogies were to be drawn, one should look to the less dramatic experience of Italy, which has definitely undergone a certain form of defascistisation, but so lenient that the Italian president at the time of the Treaty of Rome signing in 1957 was one of the ministers in B. Mussolini’s first government. Therefore, we believe that it would be sufficient to purge the Russian government of war criminals and those involved in the most significant human rights violations. This would not only change society, but also arouse its enthusiasm rather than resistance.
In our view, the attempt to integrate post-Putin Russia has the potential to be a very successful venture for Europe for several reasons.
First, the united Europe from its very beginning adopted the idea of project thinking — it was created according to a certain plan, which was designed to overcome spontaneous development and create a community with a number of predetermined features and characteristics. Russia is a relatively alien element to the united Europe, but its inclusion in European institutions is a challenge of a scale that Europe has not faced since at least the introduction of the euro. It is a project that can demonstrate Europe’s viability and ambition. Unlike the Cold War era, today’s Russia does not look like a superpower that cannot be “digested” by Europe: its population is equal to that of the two largest EU countries, Germany and France; its economy is about 2% of world GDP; Russia is no more multi-ethnic than the major continental European states where ethnic Europeans make up about 80% of the population.
Second, Russia and the EU are a perfect match in economic terms: Russian exports are mainly minerals and primary products, which were eagerly consumed in the EU before the war in Ukraine. The Europeans could, by bringing Russia into their legal space, establish effective control over a significant part of resource production and ensure technological modernization that could sustain production for several decades. Russia’s industrial potential could make Europe industrially self-sufficient, avoiding manufacturing relocation to risky and remote jurisdictions like China. The Russian market would allow European companies to increase sales of their goods. The country could also become a huge source of European labor resources — and of a higher qualification than those arriving in Europe from “third world” countries. The EU would become a continental superpower with a presence in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and the first economic bloc in the world in terms of combined potential.
Third, the EU’s enlargement to Russia would make the Union the main actor in international security issues. It would stop Russia’s orientation towards China and would become a symbol of significant strengthening of the Global North compared to the Global South18. Obviously, such integration cannot be implemented without restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, admitting it to the EU, and implementing a pan-European (with Russia’s participation) program to restore its economy and compensate for the damage caused by the aggression. Ukraine’s participation in the Union will guarantee that Russia will not be able to exert a disproportionate influence on the Union’s decisions for a long time, as it will take decades to overcome the post-war contradictions between Moscow and Kyiv. Thus, Russian-European rapprochement aims to resolve both contradictions that have remained on the continent since the Cold War and those generated by the Putin era. In addition to regional security, the new conditions will also require a global change: since the EU is not a military bloc, overall command could be exercised within NATO’s successor organization consisting of its non-European and European members and Russia. Such a course of events could put an end to the rivalry between the three regions, which has lasted for centuries.
18 — This perspective was considered by one of the authors about ten years ago (see: Kuznetsova, Ekaterina and Inozemtsev, Vladislav. “Russia’s Pacific Destiny” in: The American Interest, 2013, November-December, Vol. IX, No. 2, pp. 67-73).
Fourth, Russia’s participation in the EU could lead to a new stage in the processes of decolonization and national identity development. Many analysts are now taking the possibility of the Russian Federation’s collapse seriously19, which — if it comes to it — would be a huge threat to international security and a calamity for many nations. Russia’s participation in the EU largely eliminates this problem, as the potential withdrawal of a part of the Russian Federation from it would not entail its population being deprived of rights and opportunities and would not lead to the former empire’s component marginalization, as it would still remain part of the single European space. This option itself will force Russian society to reconsider its imperial values and open up more opportunities for development and self-expression for the peoples that make up Russia. By absorbing Russia as a still imperial state and creating a chance for it to turn into a voluntary federation, Europe will confirm its status as the main force promoting global decolonization and the trend towards turning the Union into “Europe of Regions.”
19 — See, e. g. : Bugajski, Janusz. Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. Washington D. C. : The Jamestown Foundation, 2022.
At the same, we must emphasize once again that such an enterprise will be very special in terms of the sequence of its implementation.
In addition to a declaration proclaiming the EU countries’ readiness to admit Russia as a member of the Union when Moscow signs and ratifies the basic EU treaties, a “road map” should be devised to indicate the sequence and approximate terms of the main blocks of European rules’ application to Russia. It could include the terms of mutual opening of the Russian and European labor market (an analog of the “Bolkenstein Directive”); the order of common agricultural norms application; mechanisms and timetables of labor legislation unification; streamlining of competition, anti-monopoly policies, and legislation on standardisation, and much more. The existence of such a program is extremely important — most of all because it would provide the means to clearly understand the plan for moving forward and to evaluate its implementation.
In the end of this section, it bears repeating: the proposed course is not set by some moral and ethical imperatives. We base it entirely on considerations of political and economic benefits. They dictate to offer Russians a foothold and a motive that can make them reconsider their attitude towards their government, state and society. We base it on the fact that the Soviet Union has already abandoned the belief of its own exceptionalism once before — and after decades of crime and terror against its citizens and many of the peoples of Europe, expressed its willingness to participate in a common European initiative. This willingness may once again lead Russia down a pro-Western path — and it may be more likely to manifest itself if the EU articulates a determination for Russia’s real integration into Europe on the terms of accepting the current rules of the Union, rejecting Russian government’s behavioral practices and punishing those guilty of the most egregious crimes of the Putin regime. We are convinced that this step (and its maximum popularization) can undermine authoritarian trends and strengthen pan-European security more effectively than any rearmament programs, as it can turn a significant part of the Russians into advocates of change that will ultimately benefit the whole Europe. Is it possible that Russian citizens will remain deaf to such a call? Yes, of course, but this will depend primarily on its form and presentation.