Kyiv-Brussels Seek Common Space

The informal meeting between President Leonid Kuchma and European Commission Chairman Romano Prodi resulted in an arrangement whereby a new cooperation plan and its new forms will be discussed in detail at the Ukraine-EU summit scheduled for July 4 in Copenhagen. Mr. Prodi announced this after his meeting with the Ukrainian president, reports Interfax Ukraine. Mr. Prodi also said that they had discussed the possibility of special neighbor status for the countries to have common frontiers with the European Union — Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova — as reported earlier, after the EU ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg this April. Kyiv’s response was ambiguous. Rather than answer the question whether Ukraine had European prospects, they offered neighborhood, which probably means some softening of their isolation from European processes. However, the neighborhood proposal also contained a differentiated approach to each such country, and Kyiv agreed that this was a positive sign. According to Mr. Prodi, he explained to Leonid Kuchma that the EU would thus keep countries with common political principles in its favor and that the goal is that the “construction of a common space in which common economic and social interests will be adhered to.” Incidentally, the Ukrainian diplomats were not overjoyed with the EU’s proposed inclusion of Ukraine in a common economic space with Russia, holding that EU policy toward Ukraine should not be based on EU- Russian relations.

After the meeting with Romano Prodi, President Kuchma stressed that he had never raised the issue of Ukraine’s associate membership in 2004 or full membership in 2011; what they had actually discussed was the need for Ukraine to achieve the requisite standards. Mr. Kuchma believes that the matter of EU expansion has been decided, so Ukraine must find ways, together with the EU and Russia, to mitigate the negative effects of this expansion. The sentiments dominating the union, he said, allow one to expect a positive solution to the problem.