The European Council on Foreign Relations

The Scorecard tour: Sofia

Date: 14th February 2012  |  Author: Hans Kundnani,

Categories: Europe and the world, Middle East and North Africa, Scorecard,
Tags: , middle east, sofia, sweden , scorecard, bulgaria

Hans Kundnani is one of the lead authors of the ECFR's Foreign Policy Scorecard. He's writing this series of blog posts as he attends a series of Scorecard events across Europe and beyond. 

The first stop of my Scorecard tour was Sofia. I'm writing this from the departure lounge at Sofia airport, which overlooks the snow-covered tarmac (it's been snowing here for three weeks and shows no signs of stopping). This afternoon, we had a very interesting discussion with a group of a dozen or so people that included a former foreign minister, parliamentarians, officials (including someone from the new president's office), journalists and think tankers.

There was an interesting discussion of the idea of the European interest on which the Scorecard is based. The participants suggested we should look more closely at how to define it: is it simply lowest common denominator? or something transcending narrow national agendas? If France and Germany back Nord Stream, one participant asked, they surely represent a plurality of interest within the EU. So why do we see it as contrary to European interest. I explained that each score and grade is based on a political judgement - in this case that is bad for Europe to increase its dependence on Russia for energy.

As you might expect, people here were particularly interested in the sections of the Scorecard on Russia and the Wider Europe. A couple of people thought we had been a little generous in the grades we gave for European performance in the Western Balkans, where they felt the EU is losing influence - one person said he saw little will by Macedonia, for example, to go through the painful reforms that Bulgaria undertaken had in order to accede to the EU. Dimitar Bechev, the head of our Sofia office and our Wider Europe expert, responded that Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro had made progress during the year. It also prompted a discussion about the Scorecard methodology and in particular how much weight we should give to outcomes as opposed to policies.

There was also a lot of interest in the Middle East and North Africa. Marin Lessenski, who did the research on Bulgaria for the Scorecard, explained that in the last few years Bulgaria has been expanding its foreign policy beyond its traditional areas of interests. In particular, as a former Communist country, Bulgaria is watching closely how post-revolutionary North Africa makes the transition to democracy - and wants to help. Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov (who is also an ECFR Council member) also has particular experience and knowledge of the region. Last year, Bulgaria hosted the Sofia Platform, a conference on what countries like Egypt, Libya and Tunisia can learn from the experiences of central and eastern Europe after 1989. It is now following up with a series of three other conferences this year on issues such as security sector reform.
 
There was also a lot of interest in the categorisation of member states and in particular in our assessment that Sweden punched above its weight in European foreign policy in 2011. Despite its own activist foreign minister, we identified Bulgaria as a "leader" on only two components of European foreign policy (compared to Sweden on 11). So, someone asked, what could other smaller member states such as Bulgaria learn from Sweden? It's a good question but not an easy one to answer. We have another Scorecard event in Stockholm on Tuesday so perhaps the Swedes will share the secret of their success.

 

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