Oscar Pardo Sierra

The article investigates, through a comparative analysis, the different mechanisms of influence that the EU and Russia are projecting in their shared neighborhood in shaping domestic politics. It focuses on the economic and energy sectors in order to analyze two relevant policies for contrasting EU and Russia’s influence in the case of the Southern Caucasus. Contrary to commonly held opinions, Russian influence is receding in both areas and is a dominant external actor only in Armenia. In contrast, the EU is slowly increasing its presence in the economic area and has become a key player in the energy sector.

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Shaping the Neighbourhood? The Impact of the EU on Georgia

Forthcoming in 'Europe-Asia Studies', Volume 63, Issue 8, 2011

This article contributes to the growing area of inquiry about the EU’s impact on domestic policies in its neighbourhood. Drawing on the literature of EU governance in its neighbourhood, it looks at different policies regarding EU-Georgia relations during the period 2004-08: access to the single market, energy security, and foreign and security policy. It argues that policy-level incentives and the overall process of deepening relations with the EU are necessary conditions for EU impact. However, the legitimacy of the EU-promoted rules and norms has enough explanatory power for understanding their adoption or not and they are also necessary conditions for EU impact. The case of Georgia also shows the limits of the EU’s normative power; geopolitical pressures and the existence of alternative models of development present a challenge for the EU’s capacity of influence.

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"A corridor through thorns: EU energy security and the Southern Energy Corridor"

Published in European Security, Vol. 19, No. 4, December 2010, 643660

The Southern Energy Corridor (SEC), which aims to link Caspian Basin and potentially Middle East gas supplies to Europe, is one of the EU’s six priority axes of energy infrastructures. Drawing on the external governance literature, the article provides an analysis of the EU’s efforts in the wider Black Sea area to increase its energy security. It concludes that despite difficult domestic and geopolitical obstacles, the EU is pushing forward its objective to establish the SEC. However, the EU’s institutionalised governance, with the incentives derived from close cooperation, has been a necessary condition of impact, but not sufficient. The SEC builds upon the eastwest pipelines supported by the USA in order to prevent the Russian control over the Caspian Basin supplies. If the SEC is possible it is mainly because of the path-dependent processes created by those pipelines, which linked the international position of Azerbaijan and Georgia to their transit role between the Caspian Sea and Europe.

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Stabilizing the Neighbourhood? The EU’s Contribution to Security Sector Reform in Georgia

(2009) "Stabilizing the Neighbourhood? The EU’s Contribution to Security Sector Reform in Georgia”, European Foreign Affairs Review, Vol. 14, no. 4.

This article examines how the European Union (EU) has contributed to Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Georgia. SSR is a relatively new concept, which aims at creating a secure environment that is linked with democratic norms and institutions and which encompasses all the sectors and actors related to a state’s security and not only defence or intelligence forces. The European Security Strategy (ESS) identifies SSR as one of the main new possible missions of the EU’s foreign policy. Looking at the diverse EU programmes undertaken in Georgia and norms transference, the paper evaluates to what degree the EU has contributed to Georgian SSR, especially since the 2003 Rose Revolution. It is argued that in SSR the EU acts mainly as a ‘transmission belt’ of international norms and through bilateral ad hoc programmes. These results also show how the EU has increased its profile as a security provider, especially in the support of Georgian border management, and how the EU can become a security provider in areas of soft security such as judicial and law enforcement or police reform.

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