The Ukrainian and European parliaments took simultaneous steps towards each other last Thursday. The Verkhovna Rada at last passed the long-awaited European integration laws in compliance with the EU visa liberalization agreement. The European Parliament in turn ratified the amended visa facilitation agreements between the EU and Ukraine. The Ukrainian side had also ratified this agreement on March 22.
“Accept this positively but without too much glee, for this agreement has been in force for five years now,” Razumkov Center Deputy Director General Valerii Chaly says in his Facebook blog. “These amendments are really important – for example, issuing visas ‘for one year’ or ‘for five years’ instead of ‘up to one year’ or ‘up to five years,’ expanding the category of applicants (e.g., NGOs, religious communities, prosecutors and their deputies), reducing outsourcing fees, etc. But, firstly, this agreement should have long been extended to ALL citizens of Ukraine, and, secondly, this does not automatically solve all the problems – we will have to demand that the agreement be duly complied with.”
In the context of these decisions, it is worthwhile to recall such positive developments as the president’s pardon of ex-interior minister Yurii Lutsenko and, accordingly, the West’s favorable reaction. This is another step towards mutual understanding and rapprochement.
But, a statement was made the other day which it is difficult to call optimistic against the backdrop of these encouraging events. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after negotiating with the Prime Minister of Estonia, Andrus Ansip, in Berlin that, to get closer to the European Union, Ukraine should solve “a wide range of problems,” DPA news agency reports. According to Merkel, the ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko case is not the only obstacle to signing the already prepared EU association agreement. “It is about Ukraine’s law system as a whole and the question of human rights and civil freedoms,” she noted. At the same time, she emphasized that establishing closer relations with Ukraine remains the EU’s goal.
This position of Germany is not in fact new. As is known, in 2008 Germany was one of the countries that opposed granting Ukraine the NATO Membership Action Plan. It is a different question what was the role of Russia in this, but the fact remains the fact.
“I can see nothing new in these words,” Die Welt correspondent in Poland and Ukraine, Gerhard Gnauck, comments to The Day. “The intonation is basically the same as before. The Berlin government is not saying clearly whether or not Ukraine’s association with the EU is a strategically important issue. On the other hand, it seems to me that pardoning Tymoshenko would unambiguously and finally overweigh things in favor of the ‘plus.’ What worries me more at the moment is why there is no progress in practical matters. Why, for example, the signing of a contract between Kyiv, Deutsche Bank, and Ferrostaal on Ukrainian gas transportation system modernization is being put off?”
Estonia’s Premier Andrus Ansip was more optimistic. In his words, since Ukraine is an important partner of the European Union, the association agreement must be signed and come into force. At the same time, he agrees that Ukraine has “a long time” to go. “I do not think that criticism and support should exclude one another,” says Karmo Tuur, a political scientist at Tartu University, Estonia. “We should support Ukraine’s inspiration to get closer to the European Union. And we can and must criticize when something was not done or done incorrectly. From this angle, Ms. Merkel is pointing to quite concrete problems of democracy, human rights, and political trials. Ms. Merkel is a bold politician who is not afraid to say what she thinks.”
Undoubtedly, the success of Euro integration depends on Ukraine itself – on the way the government and the opposition will do the “homework.” But not only this: in the conditions when Ukrainian-Russian relations are not trouble-free and the Kremlin is trying to draw Ukraine into the Customs Union by using gas leverage, criticism on the part of Europe, especially Germany (to be a big country means to bear a big responsibility), will hardly benefit Ukraine. Our country needs support, not criticism, in this matter.
“Merkel is right to say that our judicial system is in tatters,” Aliona Hetmanchuk, director of the World Politics Institute, says in her Ukrainska Pravda blog. “But, in my view, we should make a choice: do we have more chances to solve these problems by having at least some EU leverage or by continuing to compete with Lukashenka and Putin in who will put a stronger opponent behind bars? What surprises me is a different thing – both Merkel and [Hans-Gert] Poettering are saying that Germany is interested in Ukraine’s rapprochement with the European Union. Poettering confessed in an interview that, in his opinion, Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia would be EU members in the long term. But does the European Union have now a better instrument for rapprochement with Ukraine than the Association Agreement? The Association Agreement is just an instrument. But this instrument can give Ukraine something more than amorphous European prospects. It can give it real changes. It can shift Ukraine – as far as worldwide politics and investments are concerned – from the category of “Russia plus” to that of “European Union plus.”
