Dialogue Assuming Concrete Content: Visas, So Far
Ukraine offers the European Union this kind of dialogue: signing an agreement on readmission (the mutual return of illegal migrants) and further liberalization of the active visa regime with European Union expansion. The present six priorities in the EU-Ukraine cooperation (electricity generation, trade, and investment, justice and internal affairs, harmonization of legislation, environmental protection, and transport) are proposed to be complemented by a seventh, cross-border cooperation, taking into consideration for the union’s future enlargement. An agreement on scientific and technological cooperation is planned to be signed by the end of this year. These were the results of the fifth session of the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Council in Brussels. Ukraine’s delegation to the session was led by Vice Prime Minister Vasyl Rohovy, the EU delegation was headed by Josep Pique, the Foreign Minister of Spain, the country currently presiding over the European Union. The session of the Cooperation Council was a significant event per se, since it took place three weeks before parliamentary elections in Ukraine and coincided with a big international conference called Ukraine and the European Union, also in Brussels, which was organized by the Trans-European Association of Political Research and Ukraine’s Mission to the EU.
As could be understood from Minister Pique’s brief speech at the concluding news conference, the theme of the elections in Ukraine was not the principal one during the talks. As Foreign Ministry State Secretary Oleksandr Chaly, who took part in the Brussels talks told The Day, commenting on their outcome, the very fact of proposing a dialogue on readmission and liberalization of the visa regime is very important in that it demonstrates Ukraine’s readiness to address serious issues. As The Day has learned, Ukraine in particular offered the European Union that it consider the possibility of canceling the visa regime for EU citizens. Incidentally, Poland has virtually chosen its way – Warsaw insists on the most friendly possible format of the visa regime for Ukraine which would include the most simple possible procedure of obtaining multi- entry or even long-term Polish visas. There will be some difficulties, though, since Poland is expected to join the Schengen Treaty not earlier than in 2005-2006.
One more positive outcome of the talks, according to Mr. Chaly, is the readiness of both sides to begin a dialogue on joint management of negative effects of EU expansion on Ukraine (the first ten best prepared candidate countries are expected to join it in early 2004). Vice Premier Rohovy said at the news conference, “The common border should open a road to a common future and not become a barrier to human communication.” In addition, the talks could result in the near future in the fifteen EU member countries dropping their claims during the negotiations on the admission of Ukraine into the WTO. The general mood of both the council’s session and most speeches at the conference was the willingness to ensure that the expansion of the European Union has as many positive and as few negative effects on Ukraine as possible.
The possibility of Ukraine’s associate membership in the EU was not discussed. According to Ukrainian diplomats and experts, so far Brussels and the EU member countries talk more about Ukraine’s rapprochement than about its integration. Some of the participants admitted that the EU structures have made no definite decisions yet on their further steps in relation to Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, or Moldova.
Kyiv’s point of view, which diplomats express unofficially, is that the rapprochement proposed by the European Union on the basis of the active Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (signed in 1994 and effective since 1998) will give Ukraine nothing new. Also, it is no longer adequate to the qualitative changes in many spheres that have taken place in Europe and are continuing. In official terms it means that such a rapprochement does not open European prospects to Ukraine. Moreover, Ukraine is offered the same format of relations as Russia is. But Ukraine and Russia have different policies toward the European Union with different content and hopes (at least, Russia’s membership in the EU is completely out of the question).
Kyiv would prefer its relations with the EU to be built on the basis of an agreement on association. Such documents were once signed by all the present candidate states (while Ukraine was offered the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement only). Such a format could be viewed as an instrument of integration. But the very word integration whenever it is about Ukraine unnerves Brussels. The problem is not only that 2004 will mark the onset of European Union enlargement: the EU-Ukraine Agreement will be ten years old, it will not be compatible with new realities and so the parties will have to sign a new basic document. And considering the time it normally takes the European parliaments to ratify such documents, it should already be drafted so that it could be signed in two years, when the Union starts accepting its new members.
There is one problem, German Chancellor Schroeder’s statement in Kyiv in December that the idea of Ukraine’s associate membership in the EU could be implemented has not been supported by the leadership of other EU member states or by the European Commission. Also, it is unclear what kind of associate membership Schroeder meant. Turkey, for instance, was one of the first nations to sign an associate membership agreement with the EU, but it did not speed up the process of Turkey’s full integration. The agreements signed with Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary gave them far more rights, because the dominant idea in those documents was preparation for joining. Perhaps the official structures will scrutinize one of the proposals motioned at the Brussels conference – to establish a kind of partnership for membership in the same format as the Ukraine-NATO Partnership for Peace, but with different content and final goal.
Perhaps the European Union made a mistake at the December 1999 summit in Helsinki not to list Ukraine as a future candidate for membership. Although, on the other hand, EU structures have turned out to be absolutely unprepared for the long-planned expansion which, as Brussels admits, is nothing but a headache now.
In any case, Kyiv understands that it has to create a positive basis for its relations with the European Union, that it has to be even aggressive to a certain extent (above all intellectually by knowing perfectly all the existing documents and norms) and self-confident. According to a top Ukrainian diplomat, “It’s time we got up off our knees.” The same could be said about all other directions in our foreign policy. The time has come to show through our own progress that we have to be reckoned with and that lobbying Ukraine’s interests in the European Union is truly beneficial to the union.
