Ukraine’s European Choice Still Has a Chance
Ukraine integration into the European Union, proclaimed as a top foreign political priority in the president’s inauguration message of November 1999 and included in the cabinet’s program as a strategic objective in early 2000 can “claim the status of a national idea,” Oleksandr Chaly, the Foreign Ministry’s state secretary for European integration, said at a sitting of the Ukraine-EU Committee for Parliamentary Cooperation.
“Ukraine is a country that has strategic importance for the European Union,” echoed Jan Wiersma, head of the European Parliament’s delegation, also attending the sitting. Mr. Wiersma added that the European Union will do its best to make Ukraine ready when it comes time to discuss its EU membership. He declared that EU will make every effort to avoid building walls and impenetrable frontiers between Ukraine and the Union.
Actually, there is nothing basically new about this statement; it does not go any further than the usual rhetoric with no specific meaning. And this is true of both sides.
It is also true, however, that the latest EU summit in GЪteborg, ending Swedish chairmanship, gave Ukraine perhaps its first real hope; there it was said for the first time that it could be invited to take part in the European Conference to discuss EU expansion and Europe’s prospects in general.
Ukraine’s “practical task” consists primarily in adapting its legislation to the European laws in 17 spheres (Vice Speaker Stepan Havrysh says some headway has been made only in the trade sphere). The problem is not so much in translating European standards (as often stressed in Ukraine), as in adopting and implementing fundamentally new laws. This would make it possible for Ukraine to comply with the so-called Copenhagen criteria in the political and economic domains and become eligible as an EU candidate member. EU deputies reminded everybody that Ukraine’s admission would be considered exclusively from the standpoint of these requirements.
In this sense it is only natural for the EU to take a keen interest in the Ukrainian electoral process. Jan Wiersma was convinced that it was up to Ukraine to decide how long the campaign should last, but he stressed that they will closely watch the equality of all candidate MPs and that appropriate conclusions will be made if this equality is not secured and announced for the world to hear.
According to Vice Premier Vasyl Rohovy, the rate of Ukraine’s trade exchanges with EU countries is 2.5 times more than its overall foreign trade turnover. Vice Speaker Havrysh says almost half of the Ukrainian foreign trade turnover addresses EU countries and candidate members.
After hostilities began in Afghanistan and the illegal immigration rate went up in Ukraine, this country is primarily interested in EU aid in reinforcing its eastern frontier. When asked by The Day, Mr. Wiersma declared that equipping Ukraine’s western frontier comes first, yet the connection between the Ukrainian western and eastern frontiers is very strong. EU wants to have a complete security guarantee. For this reason, the European Parliament believes that EU might provide financial assistance in equipping the western frontier. The issue could be raised in December during course of Ukrainian-German consultations.
The delegates did not mention the S-200 missile incident. We may have been forgiven the Russian Tu- 154 tragedy, but we will have to take practical steps to win their confidence, and not only in the diplomatic realm.
