Ukraine and the European Union

In the space of twenty years, Ukraine moved from being part of the USSR to an independent and free democratic state, and at one time the only former CIS state to be rated as ‘free’ by Freedom House (Freedom House, 2011a). The Orange Revolution of 2004-05 raised expectations that liberal, Western orientated democracy could be established in Ukraine (Kubicek, 2009: 323), but later developments saw Ukraine slip backwards to a position in which its future development, and relationship with the EU, were highly uncertain.

Ukraine was never offered the incentive of EU membership and so in this sense was not the subject of EU democratic conditionality in the way that candidate or potential candidate states had been. Instead, the EU used a number of policy approaches. In the immediate aftermath of the Orange Revolution, the new leadership in Ukraine considered applying immediately for EU membership, encouraged by the ‘new’ EU member states advocacy of offering Ukraine a membership perspective, but it was advised by the European Commission not to apply and to concentrate instead on reforms (Shapovalova, 2010a: 62). Six years after the Orange Revolution, the message from the EU to Ukraine was still the same – forget about membership and concentrate on getting your house in order (Youngs, 2010d: 143). It seemed that within the EU, policy towards Ukraine was tending towards lowest common denominator outcomes in terms of Ukraine’s EU membership prospects (Youngs, 2009c: 373). The EU was however the largest multilateral donor to Ukraine, through the Technical Aid to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) programme, the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), and more recently through the European Neighbourhood Partnership Instrument (ENPI) which had an increased focus on democratic development and good governance (Shapovalova, 2010b: 3). However, EU assistance to Ukraine still gave little attention to projects aimed at political parties (Shapovalova & Shumylo, 2008: 273) and in general, Western assistance to political parties in Ukraine was ineffectual as it had been thwarted by domestic constraints (Bader, 2010).

Under President Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005), Ukraine developed a ‘multi-vector’ foreign policy towards Moscow, Brussels and Washington seeking to play them off against each other (Kubicek, 2003: 208). Ukraine was important as it could ‘go either way’ in choosing either European integration or a return to the Russian sphere of influence (Wilson, 2009: 292). This fits with what one interviewee described as

Ukraine’s “love/hate relationship with Europe” (Vitaliev, 2013). Relations with Europe

became increasingly important, and in 1994, Ukraine and the EU agreed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), which came into force in 1998. The EU’s engagement with Ukraine from 2003 came under the new European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) which was designed to engage with states neighbouring the EU but without offering them the prospect of EU membership. Initially, Ukraine’s inclusion in ENP alongside other EU neighbours in North Africa was seen very negatively in Ukraine and as a snub. But the post-Orange Revolution government turned firmly towards Europe in its foreign policy, and in February 2005 an EU-Ukraine Action Plan was adopted, outlining strategic objectives for the next three years.

The ENP Action Plan had a much stronger emphasis on democracy and the rule of law than the PCA of the 1990s (Gawrich et al, 2010:1218). One area that the EU provided financial and technical assistance for through the European Neighbourhood Partnership Instrument (ENPI) was reform of the judiciary (Serdiuk & Petrov, 2010: 191) but this failed to stop the deterioration in Ukraine’s reputation for judicial arbitrariness and corruption, as shown by the decline in its Freedom House score and very modest increase in its score in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index between 2001 and 2008 (Grødeland, 2010). Transparency International ranked Ukraine at only 2.3 on their 1-10 scale (with 1 being the most corrupt) of perceptions of corruption (Transparency International, 2011). The ENP created a policy approach for the EU’s engagement with Ukraine and the instrument of an Action Plan helped to convey a blueprint for action for domestic political actors. However, the consensus, political will and capacity for reform remained very limited and so progress remained slow (Wolczuk, 2008: 117).

The EU’s policy approach towards Ukraine also included the beginning of Association Agreement (AA) negotiations in 2008, and the 2009 Association Agenda, which helped prepare for, and facilitated the entry into force of, the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, including the incentive of a deep and comprehensive free trade area

(DCFTA). Some argued however that if the EU waited until after the DCFTA was agreed with Ukraine, it would be too late to have any influence over its domestic reform (Kuzio, 2011b). Speaking while on trial in August 2011, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was asked about the importance of the agreements that Ukraine was negotiating with the EU at that time, and she described the AA and the DCFTA as ‘important stepping stones that draw Ukraine closer towards Europe’ but that in order to be effective, the EU and its member countries needed to ensure that Ukraine did not just espouse, but actively practised, European values and norms of behaviour (Tymoshenko, 2011b).

Although there are no EU Regular Reports for Ukraine as it is not currently an accession candidate state, there are other EU sources that assess Ukraine’s democratic development, such as ENP Progress Reports. Table 2.3 below shows the EU’s assessment of Ukraine in 2010. It can be seen that the assessment is strongly negative in the areas of the judicial system and the fight against corruption, and Ukraine was not considered to fulfil the Copenhagen Criteria. In the light of such a negative situation in regard to meeting the conditions for EU membership, a ‘Euro- pragmatism’ may be emerging in Ukraine which foresees a deepening of trade between the EU and Ukraine as well as visa-free travel, but which does not include EU membership (Stegniy, 2011: 68).

Table 2.3: EU assessment of Ukraine in 2010

Issue Assessment

Stable institutions -

Judicial system - -

Fight against corruption _{- -}

Human rights and minorities +

Media freedom _-

Fulfils Copenhagen Criteria -

+ Positive - Negative

++ Strongly positive - - Strongly negative Source: Author’s own categorisation

In May 2009, the EU launched the Eastern Partnership (EaP), covering Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Moldova. The EaP included a Civil Society Forum which aimed to foster civil society at a grass roots level, and this was aimed at addressing the criticism of the ENP that it focused too narrowly on such ‘high politics’ issues such as security and energy (Sagan, 2010: 442). This forum was established in November 2009 and brought together hundreds of CSOs from the EaP countries and the EU, and was an example of the kind of new policy approach that the EU was seeking to use that goes beyond the kind of technical assistance that schemes like TACIS offered in the past (Kaca & Kazmierkiewicz, 2010).

Ukraine’s relationship with the EU stalled in November 2013 with the failure to sign into force the AA/DCFTA that both sides had spent so long in negotiating. This move by the political elite in power at the time, under the Yanukovych Presidency in power since 2010, appeared to catch the EU somewhat by surprise. The other key external actor in the Ukraine case, the IMF, and the EU had seemingly not been successful in their efforts to compete with the attraction of the incentive of financial assistance from Russia. This point in time, at which the Ukrainian political elite was finally having to make a choice between two different foreign policy orientations, was clearly a critical one. The future relationship between Ukraine and the EU stood in the balance, and as it is so critical a period, some additional comments on developments in Ukraine in the early part of 2014 will be added in Chapter 6.

2.4 Conclusion

The three accounts offered here of the case study countries of Poland, Croatia and Ukraine during the period 1990-2013 give us a point of reference for the chapters that follow. In terms of comparison between our cases, all three have sought engagement with the EU as part of the process of their transition from Communist countries to democracies over the time period in question. All three have increased the level of their relationship with the EU through processes of engagement, but all have followed their own unique path, largely determined by the domestic conditions in each case.

Right from the very beginning of the period of study, Poland was developing a closer relationship with the EU, and moving towards becoming an EU member. As we will see, this was helped by its political elite, which was, despite its fragmentation, to a great extent unified in its goal of taking Poland into the EU (and NATO). Poland’s highly active pro-EU civil society was also a key factor in its development, and it used the EU accession process to press successive Polish governments for reforms.

Croatia emerged from a federation of states and in the initial period in question, it was independence and nationhood that were the political priority, becoming acute in the form of regional conflict. Engagement with the EU therefore had to wait until after state building had finished. Croatian pro-EU civil society became more active in the run up to the election of 2000, and was increasingly active during Croatia’s EU accession process, leading to Croatia’s entry into the EU in 2013. The post-2000 political elite in Croatia was much more receptive to EU influence, as we shall see, and this may have been the crucial factor.

Ukraine moved from being part of the USSR to an independent and free democratic state, and at one time the only former CIS state to be rated as ‘free’ by Freedom House. The Orange Revolution of 2004-05 raised great hopes among pro-EU civil society and elsewhere, but these hopes faded as the political elite in the post-Orange Revolution period seemed incapable of making reforms or of furthering Ukraine’s relationship with the EU by building on the PCA agreement of the late 1990s. Later developments post-2010 saw Ukraine slip backwards to a position in which its future was highly uncertain. By the end of 2013, Ukraine faced a crucial choice between engagement with the EU, or the acceptance of Russian financial aid.

Reviewing these developments in our three cases over the period 1990-2013 in this way provides us with a point of reference for the chapters that follow. Chapter 3 will focus on the ‘EU level factor’ in terms of the level of development of the EU’s policy approach toward each case country. Chapters 4 and 5 will then examine the ‘domestic level’ factors. Chapter 4 will focus on the receptiveness to EU influence of the political elite, and Chapter 5 on the level of activity of pro-EU civil society. After this, we will be able to examine the potential interplay of these variables, and the possible causal mechanisms that such interplay might have created at particular key points in time, and this should enable us to seek to answer the central research question.

Chapter 3