| Author (Person) | Leonard, Dick |
|---|---|
| Series Title | European Voice |
| Series Details | Vol.9, No.38, 13.11.03, p12 |
| Publication Date | 13/11/2003 |
| Content Type | News |
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Date: 13/11/03 Ukraine is unlikely to make any serious progress in accession talks with the EU while Leonid Kuchma remains in power. But the president may be around for a few more years yet, writes Dick Leonard WHEN the Champagne corks are popped next May in the capital cities of the ten new EU member states there will be no celebrations in Kyiv. The Ukrainians are only too aware that they will be absent from the feast, and wonder if they will ever be invited. They got little cheer from last month's EU-Ukraine summit at Yalta, in the Crimea. The EU team, led by Silvio Berlusconi, Romano Prodi, Javier Solana and Chris Patten, met up with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and his leading ministers in the sixth annual encounter since the signing of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) in 1998. The Ukrainians were under no illusions that they would obtain a timetable for membership of the Union, but had hoped to upgrade the PCA into an association agreement similar to those accorded to the new member states prior to the beginning of their membership negotiations. They were told that this would be premature, and that the country should first press ahead with the reforms needed to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO) and be designated as having a full market economy. Berlusconi and Prodi also made clear that Ukraine was still far from meeting EU standards on political and democratic behaviour. Prodi, however, somewhat surprisingly, said that he did not believe that Ukraine's recent agreement with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to create a Single Economic Space would be inimical to its relations with the EU. The only concrete results of the summit were agreements to increase cooperation in the energy, transport and scientific fields. No new commitment was made to increase EU technical assistance to Ukraine, which has been running at an annual average of around €100m during the past ten years. Nor was Kyiv promised any compensation for next year's EU enlargement, which it claimed would lose it €1 billion in trade. The EU negotiators challenged this figure, saying that the Ukrainians would not lose out in all sectors; in some they would gain because the average tariff would go down. On balance, they claimed, the Ukrainian economy would not be damaged, but if it was, and the country had become a member of the WTO, it would have the right to compensation. One group of Ukrainians who are likely to be severely affected by enlargement, and the subsequent adoption of Schengen regulations by their neighbours, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, are small traders living in the border regions. They had their first taste of what the future may hold on 1 October, when Poland reintroduced visa regulations at its eastern border. The EU is seeking ways to ease such problems under its Wider Europe programme agreed earlier this year, but has not yet come up with any solutions. Its deliberations should be greatly assisted by the practical proposals put forward by Professor Judy Batt, of Birmingham University, in the latest publication of the Centre for European Reform, The EU's new borderlands. Yet there is no escaping from the conclusion that the biggest barrier to future Ukrainian membership of the EU is its lack of progress in democratic reforms and its dismal human rights record, which was highlighted by a detailed statement issued by the New York-based campaigning organization, Human Rights Watch, on the eve of the summit. This drew attention, in particular, to appalling conditions and the widespread use of torture in Ukrainian prisons, a lack of media freedom, and discrimination against women in the labour force. It also recalled a highly critical statement from the EU Council of Ministers, on 16 September, the third anniversary of the "disappearance" and murder of campaigning journalist Géorgiy Gongadze. This deplored the delay in investigating his death and asserted that a number of other journalists had since also met violent deaths and others had been attacked. Kuchma himself has been accused by a committee of the Ukrainian parliament of complicity in Gongadze's murder, a charge which he has indignantly denied, without exerting himself to speed the investigation. Many western observers believe that the authoritarian Kuchma is the main barrier to the adoption by Ukraine of the reforms necessary to make it a realistic candidate for EU membership. They believe that no serious progress will be made as long as he retains the presidency, which he is due to relinquish in October next year. One Ukranian expert suggested that Kuchma would not cede power unless a "Yeltsin solution" was available. By this he meant that Kuchma would make way for a hand-picked successor who would immediately exonerate him for any crimes or misdemeanours he had committed. Kuchma has repeatedly said that he would not seek a third presidential term, which is, at any rate, forbidden by the constitution, which stipulates a maximum of two successive terms. However, some of his close colleagues are despairing of the prospect of finding a suitable alternative candidate who could command the support of all the parties and factions included in the present government. Neither Prime Minister Viktor Yankovych nor Viktor Medvedchuk, the president's right-hand man, are given much chance of winning against the main opposition candidate, the popular former premier, Viktor Yushchenko. Other potential nominees, such as National Bank Governor Serhiy Tyhypko or parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, are regarded as too independently minded by Kuchma's henchmen. So the latter are seeking a ruling from the country's constitutional court as to whether Kuchma would in fact be ineligible to run again. Kuchma's team points out that the constitution was adopted only in 1996, but that the president's first term began in 1994, and they are querying whether it should have retrospective effect. Some government MPs, who were elected in last year's deeply flawed parliamentary poll, are even discussing pushing through a constitutional amendment to extend Kuchma's second term by three years, and their own by one year. This would postpone any change of power to 2007 at the earliest. The predictable result of such a manoeuvre would be to postpone the question of EU membership for very many years, if not for ever. Conversely, if a genuinely democratic election is allowed to go ahead it could, and should, provoke a much more encouraging response from the Union than it has so far shown.
Report of Ukraine - European Union Summit, Yalta, 7 October 2003. |
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