From Pariah Image to Partner and Back Again: The EU’s Complicated Relationship with Myanmar

Abstract

To make sense of the EU’s rocky relationship with Myanmar, we need to consider how Myanmar’s political leadership is imagined in Europe. For decades, this image was bifurcated: on the one hand a military junta with its disdain for democracy and human rights. On the other hand, Aung San Suu Kyi (ASSK), ‘our’ saint-like Burmese ‘Nelson Mandela’, detained but still fighting for democracy and human rights. As a result, Brussels implemented a tough sanction regime and essentially assigned Myanmar pariah status. When Suu Kyi re-joined the formal political process in 2012 and won the 2015 elections, Myanmar rapidly transitioned from pariah to partner. Fast forward to 2017 and relations between the EU and Myanmar had soured again because of the Rohingya crisis and Suu Kyi’s ‘deafening silence’ on the issue. The article argues that to understand this rollercoaster ride of EU–Myanmar relations one must turn to the imagery of Suu Kyi in Europe. The strong cognitive dissonances, created by the widening gap between the imagined ‘saint’ ASSK and the realpolitik ‘sinner’, have impacted on the EU’s relations with Myanmar and can help us make sense of the recent turbulences in the relationship.

The Political Economy of the EU Approach to the Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar

“…On the insistence of the so-called like-minded countries (especially Scandinavian countries; see Forster, 2000), the European Council (1998) ultimately approved the EU regulation on GSP withdrawal "on account of the use of forced labour" in 1997, with little dissent among the governments of the 15 EU member states (Speece & Sann, 1998). For the first time, the EU decided to withdraw GSP privileges to a country due to concerns about labour rights violations, which resulted in many European companies deciding to stop operating in Myanmar (Heiduk, 2020).…”