EU and Ukraine Relationship Tense

KYIV, Ukraine—The European Union’s relationship with Kyiv has deteriorated over recent months dampening hopes for Ukraine’s bid to join the European Union (EU).

EU top officials paused last month as former prime minister and opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment on charges of abusing her position in negotiating contracts with Russia.

Tymoshenko’s case has become a sore point in the EU-Ukrainian relationship; it threatens to derail progress made on the former Soviet controlled country’s EU membership. The EU canceled a free trade meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych; a key step required for Ukrainian integration into the 27-nation block.

An EU resolution also criticized Kyiv for political persecution of opposition forces and demanded that Tymoshenko be released.

Despite economic reforms that would increase the possibility of EU integration, Ukraine has been stagnating for years in terms of solving key political issues such as commitment to democratic values and implementing the rule of law.

“Ukraine has been making statements [regarding EU’s integration] for already 10 years, but concrete actions and reforms have not followed up. As a usual thing, commitments are only left on paper,” said Slawomir Matuszak, an expert with Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies, in a telephone interview with The Epoch Times.

After the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought to power Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine was expected to make real progress towards EU integration. However those expectations have been curtailed, partly due to constant arguments between the president, prime minister, and the Parliament.

With the arrival of Russian-leaning Yanukovych in 2010, the EU has become more concerned over authoritarian rule in Ukraine, making it even harder to resolve political commitments.

“The Tymoshenko case can serve as a useful wake-up call for the EU with regard to political developments and the attitudes of the ruling elite in Ukraine today,” said Susan Stewart, an expert on the region with the Berlin-based Institute for International and Security Affairs.

“These attitudes not only run counter to the EU’s values and political culture, but they have also major spill-over effects in the realms of both domestic reform and foreign policy,” she pointed out in a report for the Institute.

Since Yanukovych took office, Ukraine has flirted with both the West and the East declaring itself a non-aligned country and thereby closing off any association with a military block, particularly to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

As problems increase with the EU, Kyiv has contemplated moving closer to Russia by joining the Kremlin-led Customs Union, which includes Kazakhstan and Belarus, and other economically motivated unions in the post-Soviet region.

Ukraine’s ties with Moscow depend mostly on key political decisions within the Ukrainian elite, says Stewart in her report, and Ukraine is therefore unlikely to be influenced by signals from the EU on its relationships.

Key mutual agreements are expected to be signed at the EU-Ukrainian summit in Kyiv in December, however, with Tymoshenko calling on the EU not to “narrow down this historic chance.”

But analysts say that implementing agreements made at the summit could be “patchy and difficult.”

“Ukrainian politicians understand which economic benefits they can expect, but they do not fully understand political changes that come from the EU’s integration,” said Oleksander Banchuk, an expert with Kyiv-based think tank of Centre for Political and Legal Reforms.