EU leaders bring few goodies to Ukraine

Viktor Yushchenko needs more help from the EU to keep his Orange coalition alive, writes Dick Leonard.

Tomorrow (14 September) European Commission President José Manuel Barroso will travel to Kiev, with Portuguese Prime Minister José Socrates and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana for the annual EU-Ukraine summit. Their main interlocutor will be President Viktor Yushchenko, his bitter rival Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich being kept well away from the negotiating table.

Yushchenko, who faces crucial parliamentary elections on 30 September, is anxious that the credit for any new concessions that he may wring out of the EU side should accrue to him and not his opponents.

But a glance at the agenda for the meeting suggests that the EU leaders have few ‘goodies’ to bestow, in addition to the two agreements on visa facilitation and re-admissions, which were signed on 18 June. Their principal aim is to deliver messages of goodwill and encouragement concerning the negotiation of an enhanced Action Plan for Ukraine under the European Neighbourhood Policy, the importance of conducting the elections according to the highest international standards, and the prospects for Ukraine’s entry into the World Trade Organization, which has received strong political support from the EU.

If there are to be any new inducements offered, they are much more likely to come after the election has been held, and it becomes clearer what sort of government the EU will be dealing with in the years ahead

All the indications, so far, are that the election result will be hideously close.

The latest opinion poll, published on 22 August, puts Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions in the lead, with 31.7% of those intending to vote.

In second place comes Yulia Tymoshenko’s electoral bloc with 19.7%, while Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine is on 15.1%, giving the two ‘Orange’ parties a slight edge of 3.1%.

But the Communist Party, with 3.9%, could tip the balance in Yanukovich’s favour. No other party looks likely to surmount the 3% threshold to secure representation, though the number of undecided voters still stands at 18%.

Yanukovich’s party seems extremely confident and - despite its pro-Russian loyalties - has not hesitated to employ highly expensive American political consultants to help improve its image. With a free and vigilant media, however, it is finding it difficult to persuade the public that it has changed its corrupt ways.

The large crowds it mobilised in April to protest against Yushchenko’s decision to call an election may have looked like the huge spontaneous demonstrations which were provoked by the rigged presidential election of 2004, but everybody in the Ukraine is now aware that the great bulk of them were bussed in from the Eastern region and paid $20 (€14.8) a day for their pains.

On the other side, it appears that Yushchenko has toughened up somewhat since the early days of his presidency, when he unaccountably failed to press home his advantage. As Andrew Wilson, a lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at University College London, wrote recently on the Open Democracy website: "Yushchenko made a disastrous decision to avoid ‘revolutionary justice’. ‘Bandits to prison’ was more than just a slogan of the protestors in November 2004. A few key prosecutions, involving as a minimum the perpetrators of the election fraud, the killers of journalist Georgii Gongadze whose headless corpse was found in November 2000 and Yushchenko’s own mysteriously under-investigated poisoning, would have changed the rules of the game - and were definitely expected at the time by the panicky old guard. Instead, most of the suspects ended up with legal immunity on the Party of Regions’ election list."

Now Yushchenko is showing much greater vigour and - since April - has fought every inch of the way against the continuing efforts of Yanukovich and his supporters to undermine the basis of democratic government.

Many Ukrainians are deeply disappointed about the results of the Orange revolution and the morale of Yushchenko’s supporters is low. Some of them are even advocating a new deal with Yanukovich rather than continuing to fight him.

If despite this, they - together with Tymoshenko’s party - do manage to squeeze a majority out of the election, they will face an enormous challenge. How to succeed in working together and make a better fist of governing than they did last time. In this they will need all the help they can get - including a much more positive response than EU leaders have so far felt able to make.

• Dick Leonard is author of The Economist Guide to the European Union.

Viktor Yushchenko needs more help from the EU to keep his Orange coalition alive, writes Dick Leonard.