Constitutional change in Kazakhstan and geopolitical upheaval set the scene for talks with EU.

Next week, the EU-Kazakhstan Cooperation Council meets for the first time since the violent events, known as Tragic January, in the Central Asian country earlier this year. They were followed by the announcement of a programme of significant political liberalisation, recently approved in a referendum. Political Editor Nick Powell looks at how the EU is responding at a time of geopolitical upheaval that makes its partnership with Kazakhstan more important than ever, writes Political Editor Nick Powell.

When Kazakh voters overwhelmingly approved major constitutional changes in a referendum earlier this month, a spokesperson for the European External Action Service officially welcomed the political reforms initiated by President Tokayev. Kazakhstan was referred to as an “important and valuable partner” for the European Union.

Next week both the EU and Kazakhstan will try to build on that relationship when their joint cooperation council meets in Luxembourg. As part of the French presidency of the EU, it will be chaired by France’s Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, jointly with the Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan, Mukhtar Tileuberdi, who is also the country’s Deputy Prime Minister.

One of the senior EU officials preparing for the meeting spoke this week of how connectivity -trade routes, including oil and gas pipelines- and the supply of critical raw materials had emerged as a new and suddenly very important strand in EU-Kazakhstan relations, as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The senior official said the EU had no illusions that Russia would not remain an important partner for Kazakhstan but they were having a dialogue on how to mitigate the indirect impact on Kazakhstan of western sanctions on Russia. The EU was keen to support the Kazakh government in the expansion of political freedoms heralded by the constitutional reforms now approved in a referendum.

The package of measures include making it much easier to form legal political parties and increasing the powers of parliament in a previously ‘super-presidential’ country. For the EU they’re a sign that Kazakhstan is going in what it views as the right direction, when some countries in the wider region, such as Afghanistan and Iran, are going the other way.

Nevertheless, we can also expect the EU representatives at the meeting in Luxembourg to stress to their Kazakh counterparts that they remain keen to learn the outcome of the investigation into what triggered the protests across Kazakhstan in January and the violence that followed. The European External Action Service has noted that the largest city and epicentre of the protests, Almaty, was also the only part of the country where less than half the voters took part in the referendum.

For the Kazakh government such evidence of Almaty’s ‘free spirit’ points to a genuinely democratic referendum. Getting more than two-thirds of Kazakhs to take part and more than three quarters of those who voted to support the changes are seen as positives but so is the fact that not everyone voted in favour or voted at all.

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