On February 26 a famous Italian diplomat Franco Frattini held a public lecture on Russian-Western relations at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. Now Mr. Frattini is acting as a Special Representative of Italian OSCE Chairmanship for the Transdniestrian Settlement Process. But as he said during the lecture he came to Moscow with an unofficial visit to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and to exchange with him views on international relations in general, without paying a special attention to the Transnistrian issue. Mr. Frattini is a high-ranking representative of Italian political elites and probably he perceives his engagement as a Special Representative as an honorable, but still secondary duty. His main job is to be a judge at the Italian Supreme Court fighting with mafia, he said.
While talking on international politics, Mr. Frattini doubled down on such issues as crises in the Middle East, Eastern Partnership and EU-Russian relations. His general idea was that the international relations are going through the situation of global disorder with a growing number of severe conflicts and it is only up to global and regional players whether they are ready or not to cooperate in order to guarantee stability. It relates both to Syrian and Libyan crises when the suffering countries are not able to stabilize themselves without experiencing democracy before and when the constructive cooperation of the West with various powerful players like Russia, Egypt, Iran and Turkey is a necessity.
The former Italian foreign minister and EU Commissioner Frattini still prefers to see Russia as a strategic partner which should be kept on board. In relations with Moscow he would like the West to use not only sanctions but also mechanisms of engagement. In Frattini’s opinion economic cooperation and the extension of people-to-people contacts are good instruments to achieve this goal.
Talking specifically about current crises in the EU-Russian common neighborhood, Mr. Frattini said that the EU countries should also be held accountable for current conflicts in this area. A better, closer relationship with Eastern countries was the initial idea of Eastern Partnership in 2009, so Frattini. But afterwards some EU countries being obsessed by fears of Russian influence decided to interpret this initiative as a short-cut, privileged way for Eastern neighbors to become EU and NATO members. In Frattini’s opinion this reinterpretation led to the second mistake: in 2013 the Eastern neighbors were thrown into a “either-or” dilemma when they had to choose a privileged partnership either with EU or Russia.
While evaluating the current process of Ukrainian conflict settlement, he said that his work will be based on the logic that the coin has two sides. On the one side, Russia has a strong leverage on Eastern Ukraine and should contribute to the settlement by using this leverage constructively. On the other side, Ukraine should also deliver in terms of complying with Minsk agreements. South Tirol within Italy is a good example of how autonomization could be realized, so Frattini.
When asked about which results he would like to achieve within the Transnistrian conflict settlement, Mr. Frattini told the audience that he has already had phone calls with representatives of all parties involved and that he is planning his visit to Chisinau and Tiraspol for March. He would like both conflict sides to achieve 2-4 agreements on concrete practical issues in order to have preconditions for organizing “5+2” meeting in April. With regard to intentions of both Chisinau and Tiraspol toward solving these issues Frattini said that he faced a “good will” on the Transnistrian side and “open mind” on the Moldovan side.
The story is about how the “neutral” car vehicles plates should be issued for Transnistrian drivers, how a Transnistrian telecommunication company could be recognized in Moldova, how to open the bridge across the Dniester for heavy tracks, how to get the restitution of property rights for Moldovan farmers in Transnistria. In this context Frattini reproduced a traditional discourse of the conflict settlement process by saying that all these issues should be solved to deliver tangible results for the local population.
Along with a general optimism Mr. Frattini demonstrated his awareness of a possibility that the conflict settlement could be politicized in Chisinau in face of coming parliamentary elections in the fall of this year. During his visit to Chisinau he will try to deliver a message to the Moldovan side that it would be a wrong way, he said.
The new Special Representative also declared that he would not strive for any status-related solutions within the Transnistrian conflict settlement. The only one proposal he could make to conflict sides if they will fulfill the current agenda of confidence-building measures would be the idea of a banking agreement. It is not a normal situation when Transnistrian companies cannot freely make their bank transactions, so Frattini.
It could be argued that in general the high-ranking Italian politician left a good impression. It is obvious that Transnistrian settlement is not an agenda ambitious enough for Mr. Frattini, but at the same time his experience and good relations with many European capitals will positively contribute to the conflict settlement. OSCE (both the Mission in Chisinau and OSCE Chairmanships of last years) has already done a good job mediating the negotiations, so Mr. Frattini can now work on a well-elaborated agenda. It is up to conflict sides now to have again a constructive vision of their “sovereignty”. The Moldovan authorities delivered last time a “political support” for confidence-building measures defusing the discussion on “red lines” within the conflict settlement. The coming elections will definitely make such a commitment politically much more expensive.