EU offers sectoral cooperation to Ukraine instead of membership prospects
The prospects for Ukraine’s membership in the EU are impossible today. Therefore, at the present stage the Eurocommunity is offering Kyiv advanced and sectoral cooperation. This is how Germany views the future cooperation between the European Union and Ukraine.
Germany’s position was announced by Reinhard Schaeffers, Ambassador Extraordinary of the Federal Republic of Germany to Ukraine, who presented his country’s presidency program in the EU Council and the Group of Seven and Russia. Germany will preside over the EU for the next half-year, starting on Jan. 1, 2007.
The German ambassador stated that during his country’s presidency “we should work on preparing the texts for new agreements on enlarging cooperation between Ukraine and the EU.” At the same time he admitted that the initiatives undertaken by the EU concerning Ukraine will not include any special prospects concerning the question of Ukraine’s EU membership.
The German diplomat explained that today’s “lack of prospects” for membership is caused by the EU’s current state and the enlargement process. Therefore, considerable improvements to the EU’s negotiations are being offered to Ukraine, as well as a legislative base for negotiating with the EU. Brussels suggests that these improvements be implemented through joint efforts.
Ambassador Schaeffers praised Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada for adopting every law necessary for joining the WTO. This is the background for starting negotiations with the EU on the creation of a special economic zone. After the special economic zone is created, access to the common EU market, numbering nearly 500 million people, will be open to Ukrainians.
“Besides forming the special economic zone, we would like to expedite the development of our relations by adopting a number of sectoral agreements between the EU and Ukraine,” Schaeffers said. The German ambassador believes that this issue concerns our collaboration in those spheres where there are still no corresponding agreements. Sectoral agreements refer to such spheres as the ecology, environment, transport, and jurisprudence. All this must be implemented, the diplomat noted, with the aim of bringing Ukraine to the volume of legislative and legal bases that exist in the EU.
“Once we know that the results have been achieved, we will face the fact of a new level of relations between the EU and Ukraine. This path must be traversed, and if it is, Ukraine will reach the same level of relations with the EU as Norway or Switzerland have,” Schaeffers explained.
The German ambassador also noted that the spirit of collaboration between Ukraine and the EU depends on how Ukraine and Ukrainians assess themselves. “The EU’s interest in such a partner as Ukraine will depend on the self-assessment level demonstrated here,” the diplomat noted.
