Many hopes, including European integration, were placed in the Orange Revolution, the first anniversary of which was marked last week. In his inaugural address President Viktor Yushchenko repeatedly stressed his intention to achieve EU membership. The integration path, however, has turned out longer than it seemed last year. Why? What can Kyiv expect from the Ukraine-EU summit scheduled for Dec. 1? How does Brussels assess Ukraine’s performance in honoring its obligations as per Joint Action Plan? What will be the results of simplified visa procedures? These topics were discussed by a roundtable at The Day ’s editorial office with Ian BOAG, head of the European Commission’s Delegation to Ukraine.
Today is the first anniversary of the Orange Revolution. Many expectations were placed on the new leadership. Lately, however, the Ukrainian authorities have attracted much criticism, including from Western experts. How much of this criticism is justified?
The new president and the new government came to office bearing such a weight of expectations that it was almost impossible to satisfy them. Many of the Ukrainians I talked to — and I believe most foreign observers would agree with them — said that a considerable change had taken place in terms of freedom, democracy, freedom of the media, and relative absence of fear. The backdrop against which political life in Ukraine takes place has changed enormously in ways that, in my understanding, the people in the Maidan wanted. Now it is clear that not everything that might have been done has been done. That is human nature. If we look, for example, at the Action Plan for Ukraine, which the European Union adopted this past February, both sides have made good progress.
Our assessment is positive. In some areas we had considerable success, in some we could make more progress. The expectations were huge from the beginning, but I don’t think we should now become too critical, because expectations are not always immediately justified.
Foreign Minister Borys Tarasiuk of Ukraine has spoken about the need for clearer signals in bilateral relations between Ukraine and the EU, such as the signals given to Macedonia, the next candidate for EU membership, or the signals recently given to Bosnia and Herzegovina, which are about to start negotiations on the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU. Meanwhile, Ukraine is still just a neighbor .
Here we come back to the situation in the European Union and its relations with neighboring countries. The fact is that these relations have a long history, and in all these years a sort of queue has been formed of these countries. There were ten countries at the head of that queue, which joined the EU in May of last year. There are Romania and Bulgaria, which will join in January 2007; there are Turkey and Croatia, which have just started negotiations; there are other countries of the Balkans that, as you indicated, are beginning to move in the direction of being in the position of going toward negotiations; and then, of course, there are other countries, the largest of which is Ukraine. You would perhaps argue that one of Ukraine’s misfortunes is that the Orange Revolution didn’t take place five years earlier. But, instead of focusing on what might have been, we should remember that we have our European Neighborhood Policy, which offers our neighbors, such as Ukraine, very good prospects of realizing the first step of their European aspirations. It envisages integration of countries like Ukraine into the European common market and much closer political relations, as well as relations in the spheres of foreign policy and security policy. We have a three-year Action Plan that places obligations not only on Ukraine but also on the European Union. If both of us realize all the objectives in this plan, Ukraine will thus realize a very large part of its ambitious program. It will be much closer to the European Union. It will be similar in many respects to the countries of the European Union. Finally, I would recall that depending upon the extent to which the Action Plan is realized, this will condition to a considerable extent what would be in the so-called enhanced agreement, which will have to be negotiated and concluded by March 2008. On this date the actual Cooperation Agreement expires. So, as many commissionaires and the President of the European Commission have said, the Action Plan and the Neighborhood Policy neither necessarily lead to membership in the European Union nor exclude it.
What effective ways are there to use the mechanisms afforded by the EU’s neighborhood policy? After all, one often hears statements to the effect that this document places Ukraine in the same basket with countries of the northern Mediterranean.
Firstly, the obvious point is that even if you find yourself in the same basket with the others, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will stay there forever. It’s a historical fact that the Neighborhood Policy was originally devised for the countries east of the European Union. The countries of the southern and eastern Mediterranean were added at a later stage. I know this very well, because before I came to Ukraine I was working in Egypt. I observed how this process took place consequentially. Secondly, if you read carefully the documents relating to the Neighborhood Policy, they state very specifically that there will be differentiation between countries. Our aim is not to unify our policy toward all countries. The Neighborhood Policy is a sort of framework. If one of our partners goes further and faster, we’ll accompany that partner all the way. I think that Ukraine should not try to draw any complicated deduction from the fact that at the present moment there is a rather large group of countries in the Neighborhood Policy.
Perhaps part of Ukrainian society is too impatient, but 10 years have passed since Ukraine joined the Council of Europe. At that time the Ukrainian flag was raised in Strasbourg together with Macedonia’s. Yet while the European Commission promoted Skopje to candidate for EU membership, it did not offer Kyiv similar prospects. Perhaps this is the reason why Ukrainians believe that the state needs greater incentives and not just conditions, especially considering the significant factor of the Orange Revolution.
I think that the European Union does give encouragement to Ukraine. Relations between the EU and Ukraine are close and getting closer. I measure simply by the number of visitors from the European Commission to Ukraine. If you include those who will come to the summit, one can say that one-third of the members of the European Commission has made an official visit to Ukraine: 8 out of 25. We have a huge number of officials of the working level making visits in the opposite direction. So, our relations are close. The agreements that we will sign at the summit are testimony to this, and this is only the beginning. I think that there is a great deal of encouragement in this. The only encouragement we can’t use in our relations with Ukraine right now is to talk in specific terms about the accession of Ukraine to the European Union. However, everything we do tends to reinforce Ukraine’s capacity to present itself as a very probable candidate.
However, I would come back to what President Yushchenko said shortly after coming to office: that reforms are to be implemented not to make the European Union happy but because it’s good for Ukraine. We want to encourage that and to help this process.
In his inaugural speech Viktor Yushchenko placed a lot of emphasis on European integration. But we have yet to see some tangible progress in this matter. At first Kyiv was given to understand that it is inexpedient to revise the Action Plan, and later that it is inexpedient to apply for EU membership any time soon. What is the more decisive factor behind such “inexpediency”: the fact that Kyiv is not ready or that Brussels is unprepared?
At this particular moment I don’t think that either side is ready. I think most Ukrainians would agree that Ukraine has a whole lot to do before it can become a candidate ready to take our membership. You have seen the results of the two referendums on the European Constitution that took place in France and the Netherlands. Some people believe that the negative results were partly provoked by the feeling that the enlargement, at least for some time, had reached a certain frontier — not geographically but in terms of quantity. The union of 15 countries suddenly became a union of 25 countries, with the prospect in another couple of years of becoming a union of 27 countries, thus doubling its size in terms of the number of countries in two or three years. I believe that this enlargement was a tremendous undertaking by the European Union and one of its greatest success stories. To be able to offer membership in the union to all these countries that emerged either from the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact was a tremendous factor of stability. I think that if you ask whether the European Union is ready for a further enlargement, the answer is, psychologically, it isn’t. We need time to absorb the 10 new countries.
What realistic results can we expect of the Ukraine-EU summit?
I think, first of all, this is a very symbolic event. It’s Ukraine’s first summit since the new government took power. The prime minister of Great Britain, which is now presiding over the European Union, Dr. Solana, President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, EU Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson are coming to Ukraine. This in itself is a demonstration of interest and sympathy for Ukraine.
What will happen at the summit, I think, will be a discussion of a variety of subjects. It is planned to sign three agreements: one on the use of the Galileo satellite system, the other on civil aviation, and one on energy cooperation, a very important subject for both Ukraine and the European Union. We will register the considerable progress made in the implementation of the Ukraine-EU Action Plan. We will also express the desire to see further progress in it. We will record the fact that negotiations on visa facilitation have started. The Commission hopes that we will be in a position to confirm that Ukraine has met the conditions for granting it the status of a market economy.
On the other hand, I think we would be disappointed so far that the Ukrainian Parliament has not adopted the necessary WTO legislation. We believe that joining the WTO will be very good for Ukraine. We are doing everything we can to support its candidacy. We completed negotiations on our bilateral agreement a long time ago. Of course, once Ukraine has joined the WTO, we will be in a position to start negotiations on a free trade zone, which again would be very beneficial for Ukraine and could be an essential part of a new trade agreement between Ukraine and the EU. I think the summit will be able to demonstrate that relations between Ukraine and the European Union are moving forward well.
The EU’s first assessment of Ukraine’s progress on the Action Plan will be made at the summit. What will it be like?
Yes, I think that the first formal assessment will be made in February of next year, a year after signing the Action Plan. Obviously, we and the Ukrainian authorities are following its implementation. As I said, our assessment is positive, though there remains a lot to be done. I would like to quote some things that we have done together. It was agreed that Ukraine would associate itself with declarations on foreign and security policy matters by the European Union. In a very large number of places Ukraine has taken advantage of that decision, and we welcome that. And sometimes Ukraine had to make a difficult choice. In a similar way, Ukraine has begun to tackle the problem of corruption. It has made a major initiative in putting forward President Yushchenko’s plan for resolving the Transdnistria problem. I’d also like to recall that the European Union is sending a border assistance mission that will be inaugurated by Ms. Ferrero-Waldner and Dr. Solana on Nov. 30, the day before the summit. Ukraine has discarded a number of discriminatory practices against European Union companies and exports. Customs procedures have been simplified. A new joint stock company law has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada. I could go on like this for a very long time. Maybe each of these things does not sound very exciting in itself and would not make headlines in your newspaper, but if you add them all together, you’ll see a collective move forward. If Ukraine does the same week after week, month after month, year after year, the cumulative effect of all this will be to radically change and reform many areas of life and business in Ukraine.
According to one myth, Ukraine is divided on the question of European integration. To some extent there are differing attitudes, but they are not only due to geographical factors. We know that you recently visited Donetsk. Did you sense this difference when you were communicating with Donetsk residents as opposed to Ukrainians elsewhere?
I think Europe Day in Donetsk was a great success. We got tremendous support from people in Donetsk: the governor, the mayor, private business, the university, etc. The number of people out on the street was very impressive. Everybody seemed to be having a good time, and also we’ve been able to send and receive messages.
It’s clear that in this country, as in any other, there exists a range of views about the European Union. In my country, the United Kingdom, there are plenty of people who don’t agree with the European Union. However, I don’t believe that the attitude to Europe is determined by geographical lines. I have traveled in Ukraine — not as much as I would like — but wherever I would go, I never felt that I was surrounded by people who were essentially hostile. I have a task, which is to try and persuade people of the importance and benefits of the European Union, and to do it objectively: not propaganda but just the facts, so that people can judge by themselves. That is one of the reasons why we do Europe Day.
You have said that Ukraine will be granted market economy status if it fulfills certain conditions. Is it possible that it will obtain this status before or during the summit? Have you considered longer-term prospects?
You can never announce something until the decision is actually taken. As I said, the Commission had taken a decision that in its view Ukraine satisfies the conditions of a market economy. We are in the process of consulting member states about this, and we are very hopeful that a positive decision is on its way.
European and especially Euro-Atlantic integration remains a subject of heated political rivalry. This is becoming especially obvious as the parliamentary elections draw closer. It is somewhat annoying to hear the same argument that “nobody is expecting us in Europe.” However, EU skeptics scored some points in connection with the recent outbreak of civil unrest in France. Do you believe that these events can affect public opinion in the EU member states, setting it against possible EU accession by other countries?
It is very difficult to answer a question like that if you, like me, don’t actually live in the European Union. You need to be on the spot to know what people are thinking or saying. My personal view is that those two things aren’t connected. What happened in France was not the first case, it’s just that events there were most widespread, but I think the problem is not one of enlargement of the European Union. In many respects it’s not one of immigration, either. We have to remember that most of the young people who’ve been demonstrating on the streets were born in France and are French citizens. The problems are much more ones of an internal character: social and economic. I know that the famous “Polish plumber” appeared at the referendum in France. There’s no doubt that at some distant date we’ll hear about the Ukrainian plumber. But I don’t think any of this is a real problem.
As far as we know, Poland successfully used the image of a Polish “plumber” to promote tourism. As a result, there has been an increase in the numbers of Frenchwomen wishing to visit Poland. EU skeptics in Ukraine have another argument, the experience of Turkey, which has been moving toward the EU for the past four decades. What positive and negative conclusions can Ukraine draw from Turkey’s experience? I wouldn’t say that it’s negative. First, the Turkish situation is very specific. As you know, Turkey signed the Association Agreement in 1963. Its progress toward beginning negotiations about membership had certain zigzags in time, linked to internal events inside Turkey and the evolution of the human rights situation in this country. I think you may have noticed that when the European Union agreed to begin negotiations with Turkey this year in October, it attached more stringent conditions to ethnic negotiations than before. This shows that it is going to become more difficult rather than less difficult to join the European Union now. But every country is unique and every bid for accession is unique. If you look at Britain, Ireland, and Denmark, which joined in 1973, and the countries working now on joining the EU, you will see that each country came to its accession negotiations with a different motivation, a different historical background, and a different starting-off point. Turkey demonstrates extreme consistency in its aspiration to join the European Union, and it shows that it is willing and able to adapt to meet the criteria put forward by the EU.
As a way to increase its importance to the EU, Ukraine is trying to use regional initiatives. Much has been said recently about our “intermediary” role in the dialog between the West and Belarus. Does the EU have a plan for what is to be done with Belarus, and if so, what is Ukraine’s role in it?
When I mentioned earlier the fact that Ukraine was aligning itself with safety declarations of the European Union, obviously, one of the areas that I had in mind was precisely those related to Belarus. We very much welcome the support of Ukraine, because we realize that Belarus is your neighboring country, and there are considerable economic relations between Kyiv and Minsk. We follow the events in the region as a whole, as does the Ukrainian government. Whenever we meet to talk, we talk about what’s going on in the region.
Does this mean that consultations are ongoing and it is too soon to speak of a strategic plan?
I imagine that this subject will be discussed during the summit. However, while sharing the same concerns, Ukraine and the European Union approach this problem from their particular perspectives.
You were in Donetsk to attend events organized by System Capital Management. Having worked in Ukraine for a long time, you probably had other opportunities besides this one to see the capabilities of Ukrainian companies. How effectively is the Ukrainian government lobbying for the interests of Ukrainian companies in foreign markets?
I think it’s clear that there is a tremendous effort being made to promote Ukraine as a destination for investment and for trading partners. One of the objectives of the Action Plan is to improve the business climate in Ukraine and attract more direct foreign investment. I think, given the size and potential of Ukraine, the foreign investment here is relatively low. There are investors all over the world looking for places to put their investments. What we are looking for is a stable, transparent environment. That is something Ukraine’s government is seeking to achieve in its reform, and it is something we are seeking to help the Ukrainian government to achieve it by supporting these reforms. One of the indicators of success of the Action Plan will be the evolution — hopefully, upwards — of foreign direct investment to Ukraine.
