The foreign ministers, who will meet in Brussels together with EU defence ministers in a 'jumbo GAERC' (general affairs and external relations meeting), are widely expected to reach a unanimous decision ahead of the EU-Russia summit in Nice on 14 November.
Lately, Lithuania has been the only remaining country to oppose the resumption of talks, which were frozen at the Union's extraordinary summit of 1 September in response to Russia's "unacceptable" military incursion into Georgia, delaying possible further steps until a later date (EurActiv 02/09/08).
In the meantime, Russia agreed to participate in talks in Geneva on post-conflict settlement and complied with the ceasefire agreement, allowing EU observers to deploy to the borders of breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These developments were welcomed by the French EU Presidency and the European Commission alike. However, Lithuania maintained its opposition, considering Moscow to be in breach of the ceasefire agreement by continuing to deploy more troops within Abkhazia and South Ossetia than before the August war.
Speaking at the extraordinary EU summit on 7 November, Sarkozy strongly appealed to the Union to honour its commitments to Russia, which in his view had fulfilled its main post-conflict obligations. Commission President José Manuel Barroso also insisted that one common EU policy on Russia was better than several different positions from groups of member states.
Technically, the Union does not require unanimity to restart the EU-Russia talks. As Sarkozy recently said (EurActiv 22/10/08), the 1 September decision was not to suspend talks but postpone them. If EU leaders had decided to suspend the discussions, they would have needed a unanimous European Council decision for them to be restarted. The decision to postpone allows the Union to continue the talks without giving any assessment, Sarkozy explained.
Moreover, the Union asked the Commission to review EU-Russia relations as a whole in view of the upcoming 14 November summit. This review, published on 5 November, calls for negotiations over a new basic treaty to continue, "first because this would allow the EU to pursue its own interests with Russia, and secondly because this is the best way to engage with Russia on the basis of a unified position," the document reads.
But although unanimity is not required, EU ministers would surely try their utmost to achieve it, perhaps at the price of a written declaration restating the Union's rejection of the secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
It is widely anticipated that Lithuania's hardline position will be difficult to maintain in view of recent Western press reports that Georgia's army attacked the South Ossetian capital Tshinvali with indiscriminate artillery and rocket fire on 7 August, killing many civilians, diplomats told EurActiv.
