Europe Should Be Believed In

February 7 was by far the first “European day” in Kyiv after a long pause. President Leonid Kuchma, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Anatoly Zlenko met EU Council Secretary General Javier Solana, First Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece Anastasios Yannitsis, and Deputy Foreign Minister of Italy Roberto Antonione, who represented the European Union Troika. Nothing radically new has so far been said at the meetings, at least judging by press releases and interviews. “We would not like our border with new EU members to turn into the so-called Schengen zone,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Zlenko emphasized during the talks. “To start with, we must become a full- fledged partner, not just a neighbor,” the minister also said on February 7. He admitted that last year, when the EU was preparing for enlargement, Kyiv “was in the shadow of the candidate countries.” “The new year must be the year when Ukraine will step out of this shadow,” Mr. Zlenko pointed out. Javier Solana stressed, firstly, that Ukraine should reform its judicial system and work for bringing the national law into line with that of the European Union. Secondly, he said that the EU “insists on observing the freedom of speech, the fundamental principle of a democratic society.” Thirdly, in his words, “we are facing considerable challenges. Undoubtedly, it will be easier to respond to these challenges if there is mutual understanding between the government and the opposition.” It was said again, this time by Mr. Yannitsis, that “we are determined to do our best to forestall new discriminating lines on the European continent.” He also added there must be a differential approach to each of the interested countries, “with due account of what is going on in it and of the extent to which its relations with the EU are important.” What is more, there was not a single public statement to the effect that the EU will open the door to Ukraine when the latter proves being capable of achieving the required standards of development.

Representatives of EU bodies and individual member states have so far been noting that one must take a realistic assessment of the prospects, that the question now is of close cooperation with, rather than integration of, Ukraine, and that absence of any signals from the EU should not stand in the way of Ukraine’s domestic reforms. On the other hand, official Kyiv and Warsaw have been trying to persuade Brussels that absence of a clearly-worded statement about Ukraine’s European prospects will only weaken the possibilities of pro-European forces in Ukraine.

“The European choice should be believed in,” Oleksandr Chaly, State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, told The Day on the eve of the Troika’s visit. In his interview with The Day , Mr. Chaly pointed out the main points in the Ukrainian attitude to the EU.