Step by Step Guide:
1) You can find out who your MEPs are and find their contact details here:
United Kingdom
Netherlands
All other EU countries

2) Send the letter below by email or post to your MEPs. If you have time, please rewrite the letter in your own words.

3) Hopefully your MEPs will contact you in due course with a reply from the European Commission and Catherine Ashton. When you receive this, please forward it to Neil Endicott.

Letter/email:
Dear [Insert name of MEP],

I am writing to express my concerns about the EU’s relationship with Turkmenistan and the proposed Nabucco Gas Pipeline. I would be very grateful if you would write on my behalf to the European Commissioner for Energy Andris Piebalgs and to the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Catherine Ashton to raise my concerns with them.

The EU has a unique opportunity to build a long-term relationship with the Turkmen government. This is important for EU energy security, but also because it creates an opportunity for the EU to attempt to influence the way in which the Turkmen government manages the huge revenues it receives from the sale of oil and gas.

You will know already how serious the human rights situation in Turkmenistan is. According to Human Rights Watch, the Turkmen government is ‘one of the most authoritarian and repressive’ in the world. Amnesty International notes the Turkmen government’s ‘widespread and systematic abuses’ of human rights, and Freedom House list Turkmenistan in their ‘Worst of the Worst’ countries without social and political freedoms, alongside Burma and North Korea.

The dictatorship in Turkmenistan is able to abuse human rights and restrict basic freedoms with impunity because it controls all revenue from the sale of oil and gas. The government uses this wealth to invest in military and police forces which are used to repress and intimidate political opponents. The Turkmen government manages hydrocarbon revenues in a completely opaque way. It is not possible for Turkmen citizens to monitor what their government does with the billions of dollars that the government collects in oil and gas revenues each year.

A recent Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) report ‘The Nabucco Gas Pipeline: A chance for the EU to push for change in Turkmenistan’ recommends that the EU makes hydrocarbon revenue management a priority in its relations with Turkmenistan. The report suggests that the EU should seek to engage the Turkmen government in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a scheme which can improve both transparency standards and the freedoms of independent civil society groups who are currently unable to operate publicly in Turkmenistan. You can access the report online here: http://www.quaker.org/qcea/energysecurity/The_Nabucco_Gas_Pipeline.pdf

I understand the sensitive nature of the EU-Turkmenistan relationship and the difficulties the EU faces in securing gas supplies for the future. However, I believe that if the EU is to live up to its commitments to development, democratisation and human rights then it should be taking a more robust position on hydrocarbon revenue management and the freedoms of civil society groups in Turkmenistan.

I would be most grateful if you could write to me to let me know when you have written to Andris Piebalgs and Catherine Ashton, and again when you receive a response from them. Please could you ask them to respond specifically to the recommendations made in the QCEA report.

Yours sincerely ,

[Your Name]
[Your Address]

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