Why is the EU stalling on signing the Association Agreement?
The whole world welcomed Euromaidan and the staunchness of Ukrainians who were defending the European choice in a bloody face-off with the regime of Yanukovych who had triggered mass-scale protests in Ukraine by refusing to sign the Association Agreement on November 29 at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius. In spite of the government’s attempts to install in fact a Russian-style dictatorship, Ukrainians managed to hold out and topple the corrupt regime. And Ukraine had to pay a high price for this. The confrontation with the regime has claimed about 100 human lives, leaving several hundred people wounded and about 200 missing.
For this reason, most of the Ukrainians are naturally putting some questions to the European Union whose values, such as freedom of speech and human rights, we defended on Ukraine’s maidans. Why is Europe not coming up to Ukrainian expectations? Why is it not signing the Association Agreement which the EU leaders were ready to sign with ex-president Yanukovych in Vilnius? Why is there no progress in visa liberalization and cancellation of visas to EU countries? And, what is more, Ukrainians cannot understand why the EU is slowly responding to the actions of Russia which has already occupied Crimea militarily and may annex the peninsula in a matter of days under a flimsy pretext of the violation of rights of the Russian-speaking population.
Was it not obvious at the very outset that nobody infringes the rights of Russians in Crimea, for, according to the Constitution of the Crimean Autonomous Republic, three languages – Russian, Ukrainian, and Crimean Tatar – share the same official status? But, for no apparent reason, the EU is hesitating to impose very serious sanctions on Russia whose army has occupied Crimea and which shuns a dialog with Ukraine’s official authorities. How long can they procrastinate? Until a referendum is held in Crimea whose result is a foregone conclusion?
After all, no one denies that Ukraine needs to have a long-term strategy and a strategic vision. But, for some reason, this is exactly what EU Ambassador to Ukraine, Jan Tombinski, emphasized during a debate, “A Window of Opportunities: What Does the EU Expect from Ukraine and Ukraine from the EU?”, held the other day by the Institute of Foreign Policy with the participation of Ukrainian officials and experts, and European diplomats.
But the same question about strategic vision can be also put to the EU. All the more so that Tombinski confessed that the European community is aware of partial responsibility for what has happened. But if he says “we saw that failure to sign the Association Agreement affected Ukrainian sovereignty – it is payment for the previous government,” this raises the question why signing the Association Agreement is being delayed now that Ukraine is facing a lot of challenges. Why is the EU prepared to sign only the political part of this agreement (and it is not known when this will be done) without a deep and comprehensive free trade area?
And the reasoning of Mr. Tombinski is not very serious in this case: he says that the delay stems from the fact that the 2010 Constitution is still in force in Ukraine and Kyiv should legalize the new government. Since the new government is saying it wishes to sign this agreement as soon as possible, why should there be any procrastination, all the more so that no changes can be made to this document which has been initialed by 28 states.
Incidentally, the new Ukrainian government has its own expectations for the EU. As the European Union says it is pursuing the policy of expanding the area of security and wellbeing towards the east, it must show this as soon as possible by rendering concrete assistance to Ukraine and using all its economic, financial, and military leverage to curb the Russian aggression. Only then, provided there is an integrated Ukraine as part of Europe, it will be possible to speak about a successful European project.
