The EU Strategy for Central Asia

In 2007 the EU began implementing a Strategy for Central Asia, covering Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The strategy set out to tackle numerous issues, ranging from good governance and the rule of law to economic development and environmental sustainability.

Although the EU has improved its relations with all the countries concerned, little overall progress has been made.

The Greens succeeded in convincing a majority in Parliament that the EU's involvement in the region should be made conditional on the improvement of these Central Asian countries' legal institutions. We explicitly demanded that the EU should not tolerate human rights violations in the name of national security.

Thanks to our amendments, Parliament is demanding that EU economic cooperation in the region, especially in the mining sector, should go hand in hand with environmental sustainability and transparent taxation and payments, in a bid to avoid corruption.

To prevent dams from disturbing regional water management, Parliament agreed to call for closer citizen participation in the planning stages. The Espoo and Århus Conventions provide are good legal instruments for achieving this and should therefore be ratified by all the aforementioned Central Asian countries.

The Greens are generally satisfied with the result. In general, the Greens were satisfied with the result.

Since Parliament's opinion on foreign affairs is not legally binding, conflict over issues in this domain is rare.