EU’s growing pains start to hurt in Kiev

By Dana Spinant

Date: 10/03/05

The leaders of the new Ukrainian administration and their cheerleaders, in particular in the European Parliament, are growing increasingly frustrated by what they perceive as a cold bureaucratic answer to Kiev's bid for EU membership.

Advocates of Ukraine's EU membership say that the Commission and member states lack "strategic thinking" about Ukraine as they have failed to develop a vision to integrate the country in the European Union. The Commission could certainly not do so without getting the green light from the member states, one official says. "The Commission is not in the business of inviting member states to join the Union, to decide who has and who has not a European perspective. Member states have ownership of the enlargement project. It is for them to say what they want with Ukraine and the Commission will execute it," she added.

There are three main reasons why member states - and consequently the European Commission - have not given more explicit encouragement to Ukraine.

The first is "enlargement fatigue". EU leaders fear that after a massive enlargement of ten poorer countries from eastern and south-eastern Europe, the EU is stretched to its institutional and financial limits. With two more countries waiting to join in 2007, Croatia in line to start negotiations later this month, Turkey impatient to start accession talks in October, and with an application from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia waiting to be processed, EU leaders fear that public acceptance of enlargement has also reached a limit.

"We need a certain consolidation time," says one Commission official involved in the earlier enlargement talks. "We need to consolidate the larger Union that we got following the accession of ten and soon twelve. In addition, the face of the Union is likely to change, with the new constitution. Let's get the new Union functioning well before enlarging again. That's the mood - and it is a reasonable attitude."

The second reason is the desire to avoid a "Turkey syndrome". "Turkey applied for membership very abruptly, in the 1960s, though it had received no earlier indication that its application would receive a positive response. And it didn't," one senior Council of Ministers said. "What followed was four decades of frustration on the Turkish side, of pressure on the EU side, of occasional fights."

The third reason is that some member states are anxious not to upset Russia. Diplomats believe it was telling that while the NATO summit discussed relations with Ukraine in very positive terms, in the presence of President Viktor Yushchenko, Jacques Chirac, the French President, stood up and left the room twice during the debate. "He does not want to be associated with this. He is avoiding the debate. He does not want Russia to be upset by the message that the EU and NATO are opening the door wide to Kiev," one diplomat from a new member state said.

But most of the EU's newest members, in particular Poland, Lithuania and Hungary, are pushing for a welcoming message for Kiev's EU ambitions. Representatives of Luxembourg's EU presidency warn against sending out contradictory messages to Ukraine's new leadership. "It would not be opportune to send several different messages to Kiev," one minister from Luxembourg said. "There is a group of states that are more impatient than the others, not necessarily more positive than the others. But we must temporise this impatience. We opted for a progressive approach which excludes nothing. But there is lot of progress to be made in Ukraine."

More cynical observers say France and other member states want to keep Ukraine out for as long as possible because they fear competition from the country's vast agricultural sector or from its industry. There is no simple explanation but one thing that is not disputed, in sharp contrast with Turkey, is the country's 'European vocation', its eligibility to join the Union, when the conditions are right on both sides.

Analysis feature on the reasons for the EU's reserved response to Ukraine's bid for EU accession. Among the reasons listed are 'enlargement fatigue', the case of Turkey and diplomatic relations with Russia.