ANALYSIS: Beyond the EU's enlargement (10/20/02)

ANALYSIS

Beyond the EU's enlargement

by Kasia Wolczuk and Roman Wolczuk
RFE/RL Poland, Belarus and Ukraine Report

The imminence of eastern enlargement is compelling the European Union to address the issue of relations with its future "direct neighbors" to the east, that is, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. While the EU has a clear-cut strategy on the Balkans, embodied by the Stabilization and Association Process, which offers the prospect of EU membership, the EU has up until recently given the distinct impression of not knowing how to deal with Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. The long-overdue process of devising a set of appropriate long-term policies and instruments was finally embarked upon by the union in spring 2002. However, this is proving to be a troublesome task.

While the EU is keen to promote stability and prosperity in its direct neighborhood, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova have expressed diverse aspirations vis-à-vis the EU. Relations with Belarus have all but broken down; Moldova, while expressing an interest in EU membership, is continuing to undergo internal turmoil; and Ukraine, despite being far from eligible for membership, is uncomfortably insistent on being offered the mere prospect of membership at some unspecified time in the future.

This insistence finds its roots in 1994, when Ukraine enthusiastically signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with the European Union becoming the first among the post-Soviet states to do so. In some respects, the agreement, which is valid for 10 years, resembled the association agreements signed between Central and Eastern European states and the EU, which provided the legal framework and instruments for cooperation in a number of areas, including energy, trade, the environment, and transportation. However, in contrast to the association agreements, the PCA did not offer the prospect of EU membership.

Yet, in 1996, President Leonid Kuchma made explicit Ukraine's intention to join the EU, and in June 1998 a strategy on Ukraine's integration with the European Union was adopted by presidential decree, formally establishing Ukraine's membership in the EU as a long-term strategic goal. A more detailed program for Ukraine's integration with the EU was adopted in June 2000.

Ukraine's declarations did not go down well either in Brussels or in the capitals of EU member-states. While the EU had embarked on protracted negotiations with candidate states, it persistently refused to offer any prospect of membership for Ukraine and Moldova. This is because the EU believes that rapprochement with, rather than membership for, these eastern states is sufficient for managing the "soft" security issues emanating from the region.

Instead, the EU set about providing a framework for relations with Ukraine by adopting a common strategy on Ukraine at the Helsinki summit in December 1999, which cautiously "acknowledges Ukraine's European aspirations and welcomes Ukraine's pro-European choice," but went no further than that - much to Kyiv's chagrin. The common strategy signaled that while Ukraine was important enough to the EU to merit a purpose-made document, it was not important enough to justify the introduction of potentially binding commitments.

In light of the regression that has taken place in Ukrainian politics since the late 1990s, not only has the EU's stance on Ukraine been vindicated, but many in the EU have also begun to view Ukraine as a hopeless case. Yet, ironically, at the same time, Kyiv has flooded EU capitals with a series of initiatives for tightening cooperation, the only effect of which has been a sense of "Ukraine fatigue" in the EU. The failure of Ukrainian officials to get the attention of their Western counterparts is beginning to elicit a sense that Ukraine is being excluded from "EU-Europe."

To counter this problem, the EU is currently in the process of devising a more comprehensive strategy and a set of more clearly articulated goals. A joint paper titled "Wider Europe," written by Christopher Patten of the European Commission and Javier Solana, the EU's foreign-policy and security chief, outlines ideas for the EU's relations with its future neighbors. While relations are to be based on a shared set of political and economic values, the "one-size-fits-all" approach is deemed inappropriate. At the same time, however, clear limits are to be put on relations with eastern neighbors, limits that will "stop short of full membership or creating shared institutions" (other than for the Balkans).

Ukraine is singled out as meriting "a more concrete recognition of [its] European aspiration," yet, significantly, "without closing any options for the more distant future." The paper proposes that Ukraine and Moldova be offered a new form of "proximity agreements" accompanied by a new kind of "proximity instrument," which would overcome the limitations of the TACIS program.

In sum, the recognition of Ukraine's and Moldova's European aspirations are finally beginning to take on a tangible format. But it remains to be seen, first, how far the EU will take this initiative and, second, how satisfied Moldova and Ukraine will be with it.

The EU has to strike a balance between responding to the challenges arising from enlargement and the "needs arising from the newly created borders of the union." The latter has resulted in efforts on securing and hardening EU borders in order to make them impermeable to soft security threats emanating from the east. This stance has dominated the justice and home affairs agenda of the EU, irrespective of the implications for countries on the other side of the new border. This is amply exemplified by the EU's insistence on the introduction of a visa regime for Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova and Russia, despite the hardship it will invariably cause.

The chances are that Ukraine, in particular, will be disappointed by "Wider Europe." Despite the positive stance of the document, anything short of acknowledging Ukraine's prospect for EU membership tends to be seen by Kyiv as a distinctly second-best option serving only to intensify Ukraine's suspicion that the European Union takes a real interest only in countries that it sees as future members. Underlying the above is Ukraine's primary fear, namely that any window of opportunity for membership will close upon the 2004 enlargement.

Despite efforts to put relations on a new footing and promote stability on its eastern border, the EU may still fail to nurture Moldova's and Ukraine's "European choice." It is, therefore, in danger of contributing to instability on its new eastern border, despite all its growing concerns.

Kasia Wolczuk is a lecturer at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, and is a Jean Monnet fellow, European University Institute in Florence. Roman Wolczuk is a researcher on Ukrainian foreign and security policy. They are the authors of "Poland and Ukraine: A Strategic Partnership in a Changing Europe?" (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, forthcoming in October 2002).

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