EDITORIAL: Ukraine's place is in Europe (05/16/04)

EDITORIAL

Ukraine's place is in Europe

On May 1, there was much celebration as 10 new countries - Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia - joined the European Union.

"Today, we see the will of the previous generations being fulfilled. Europe and the world are finding again the opportunities that were once lost in the war and in the tragic post-war divisions," said former Solidarity Chairman and former Polish President Lech Walesa, speaking at a flag-raising ceremony for the new European Union member-countries. His sentiments were shared by leaders of other neophyte EU members. Estonian President Arnold Ruutel said that EU enlargement will banish the final remnants of the Iron Curtain; while Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy and Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel cut down a barbed-wire, Iron Curtain-era fence on the border between the two countries - a tangible expression of the fact that the Iron Curtain, like the Berlin Wall before it, is no more.

At the same time, however, the EU's eastward expansion has drawn a new dividing line across Europe, as "Europe" now stops at the borders of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Moldova.

And the prospects for the European countries now outside the EU are dim. EU Commissioner for Enlargement Gunter Verheugen on May 12 stated flat out that Ukraine, Russia and Moldova have no chance of gaining membership in the EU and that the most they could expect is close economic ties with the union. His words echoed those of EU President Romano Prodi, who said on May 3 that there are no prospects for Ukraine or Belarus to join the club. Instead, Mr. Prodi held out the possibility of a "circle of EU friends," a zone of cooperation, as he described it.

Was this their answer to the question posed just a few days earlier by President Leonid Kuchma, who had asked the EU to clarify the prospects for Ukraine's integration? "We are not asking much from the EU today, we just want to know one thing - whether the EU would like to see us part of the union," he said.

To be sure, Ukraine's president and his administration themselves have been much less than clear about their intentions, vacillating between the West and the East, pursuing something they dubbed a "multi-vectored" foreign policy. Mr. Kuchma himself recently said that "haste is inappropriate" in seeking full-fledged EU membership, while Vice Prime Minister Mykola Azarov observed that Ukraine has "adjusted" its European integration priorities, noting that "Ukraine's unalterable course toward integration with Europe is not at all equivalent to EU entry.... We are focusing not on joining the EU but on the creation of economic, social, and legal standards in Ukraine that could allow us not to beg for EU membership but calmly decide - join [the EU] or not." And, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych commented that European integration is secondary. "Will it matter for Ukrainians whether they are in the EU or not if they start to live as well as [EU citizens]?"

These comments, taken together with recent developments such as the accord on a Single Economic Space encompassing Russia, Ukraine, Kakakstan and Belarus, have left many wondering what, really, are Ukraine's goals. Speaking at Columbia University, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual put it succinctly: "The question for Ukraine is whether its leaders see the country as a part of Europe, and, if so, will they take the necessary steps to make a European Ukraine a reality."

Putting all this confusion within Ukraine aside, however, we need to pose several questions to the West and to the United States, which in the past have expressed lofty visions of a Europe whole and free, and of a democratic Ukraine with a role in that very same Europe. Have you truly given up on Ukraine? Have you decided that Ukraine does not belong in Europe - despite its centuries-old ties with Europe? Have you determined that Ukraine's place is with Russia? If so, keep doing nothing to draw Ukraine into the European Union, keep turning "Europe" into a club, keep making the dividing line between the EU and those outside it clearer and clearer.

Then Brussels can become the new Yalta. And then, someday someone will ask: Who lost Ukraine?

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