L’Europe institutionnelle a goûté le nouveau Poutine: il est glacial

Depuis quelques mois (depuis la “mini-crise” Russie-Ukraine sur le gaz), les bureaucrates de la Commission européenne roulent des mécaniques lorsqu’ils parlent de la Russie et de Poutine. Leur plan est simple : les Russes doivent capituler et rendre le secteur national de l’énergie au secteur privé. Hier, Poutine, les a ramenés à la réalité, sur un ton glacial.

Le sommet Russie-UE s’est passé dans une atmosphère « cordiale mais glaciale », apprécie ironiquement une source européenne. Appuyé sur la nouvelle puissance russe, Poutine a tracé les limites du pouvoir bureaucratique européen. Le sommet a confirmé effectivement que, sorties des questions économiques sans pouvoir politique et de la rhétorique moralisante, les institutions européennes sont impuissantes. Les récents “durcissements” rhétoriques de la Commission européenne à l’encontre de la Russie permettent ainsi de mieux éclairer aujourd’hui son impuissance politique. Ce n’est pas plus mauvais et laisse le champ libre aux nations européennes d’arranger leurs relations avec la Russie comme elles l’entendent. (On goûtera la différence d’atmosphère entre ce sommet et celui de Poutine avec l’Allemande Merkel.)

The Independent du jour rend bien compte du climat. « President Vladimir Putin has icily rejected US and EU criticism of Russia's purported use of its energy resources as a political weapon, and publicly rebuffed European attempts to gain access to his country's vast gas pipeline network. His tough stance, at a one-day EU-Russia meeting at Sochi, on the Black Sea, sets the stage for what may be a fractious summit of G8 leaders in St Petersburg in July, an event being chaired by Moscow for the first time. (...)

» The European delegation, made up of the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, the Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, and the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, had hoped Mr Putin would at least pay lip service to EU sensitivities about Europe's growing dependence on Moscow for its oil and gas.

» They had hoped he would agree to ratify an energy charter giving European firms access to Russia's gas pipeline network. But in a sign of how strongly he feels he is in the right, he disappointed the Europeans on both fronts. Instead he made clear he would press ahead with plans to turn his country into a bigger energy superpower and would conduct relations with former Soviet states such as Ukraine as he, and not Brussels or Washington, saw fit. Asked about Ukraine, Mr Putin said icily: “As far as our relations with other countries, we will discuss our relations with them directly.”

» Russia supplies one quarter of the EU's gas needs, a figure expected to rise to more than 60 per cent by 2030, and some EU countries have questioned the wisdom of the arrangement after Moscow cut gas supplies to Ukraine for a few days in January in a row over pricing. Mr Putin dismissed such concerns while insisting Russia had the right to sell its energy wherever it liked. “We are building up, have built up, and will continue to build up our potential as an energy supplier. And we will offer these resources on world markets. If our European partners expect us to let them into the holy of holies, into our economy, we expect reciprocal steps from them in the most critical and important spheres for us.” »

Mis en ligne le 26 mai 2006 à 09H51