Indalecio Alvarez - Paris : The European Union’s engagement in Ukraine’s evolving crisis raises the thorny question of where the expanding bloc’s frontiers will settle, according to analysts who say Brussels must now offer Kiev a prospect of membership.
Where to draw the borders, after the bloc’s historic expansion earlier this year into eastern Europe, is also colouring the debate about whether to accept Turkey’s bid to join.
Ukraine’s relations with the European Union have been confined so far only to a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, a kind of enhanced good neighbour accord which covers political and economic ties.
“If there are fast democratic changes in Ukraine it will completely change the situation,” said Wojciech Saryusz-Wolski, of the Brussels-based European Policy Centre. “It would be very difficult, on objective grounds, for the EU to refuse.”
EU leaders have criticised Ukraine’s presidential election as fraudulent, with the opposition claiming it was rigged to favour pro-Russia Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich over pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko.
The bloc has sent its foreign policy chief Javier Solana to help mediate a resolution, while the presidents of Poland and Lithuania, two new EU members, are also involved in negotiations in Kiev.
Ukraine and Turkey were the two biggest items under discussion yesterday as French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, two of the heavyweights of EU politics, met in the northern German town of Luebeck.
A December 16-17 summit of EU leaders is expected to give the go-ahead for talks with a view to Ankara joining the bloc, despite the obvious reticence of some European parties and a section of the public which maintain that Turkey, both culturally and geographically, is not really European.
Ukraine, however, shares the same European landmass as well as its largely Christian heritage, and borders Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, which joined the European club in May.
“The EU’s refusal to even talk about the possibility of membership looks untenable,” said Kataryna Wolczuk, of the London-based Centre for European Reform.
“Solana is, in a way, empty-handed” in the mediation efforts, she said. “He has Europe’s prestige, but he could be much more effective” if he was able to offer the prospect of membership.
A European diplomat in Brussels, who did not want to be named, agreed.
“If there was a reformist president, the European Union would have to make some pretty strong gestures towards Ukraine,” he said.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the EU’s commissioner for external relations, said Thursday in Brussels that “we don’t close doors” on the question of eventually starting accession talks with Ukraine.
However, she appeared to put that prospect further in the distance, urging Kiev to work on improving its current relationship with Brussels. In any case, Ukraine is not close to fulfilling the criteria – ranging from democracy and human rights to political structures – demanded of EU members.
Europe’s reluctance to offer a definite prospect of membership is possibly because it does not want to chill relations with Moscow, which sees Ukraine as its own natural ally.
A study in 2000 by the French and German foreign ministries concluded that Kiev joining the EU ranks would lead to Moscow feeling isolated.
But Bronislaw Geremek, a former Polish foreign minister who is now a member of the European Parliament, called on Brussels “to tell Ukraine now that there is a place for it within the European Union.”
If the Ukraine crisis is resolved in favour of Yushchenko, “it will oblige European leaders to pay more attention to a country that nobody took seriously a month ago,” said Fedor Lukyanov, editor in chief of the magazine Russia in global politics. – AFP


photo: Supporters of Ukraine’s opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko cheer during a rally on Kiev’s Independence Square yesterday. – Reuters
Last update on: 3-12-2004