The European Commission has issued a new series of reports on countries in the European Union's Eastern and Southern neighborhoods, detailing their progress on political and economic reforms. While Moldova and Georgia have seen considerable reform, and will thus benefit from additional EU funds, most of the region, including Ukraine, has shown mixed results at best.
Released on March 20, Ukraine’s
progress report noted the country made considerable steps forward on the
legal arena, notably with a new criminal code that went into force and a new
law against torture. However, it added, most of the previous report’s
recommendations have not been addressed.
Among the list of problems, the report
highlights a persistently poor media climate (with dominance of pro-government
outlets and increasing attacks on journalists), a lack of efforts to deal with
conflict of interests in the judiciary and controversial attempts to
renegotiate Ukraine’s World Trade Organization commitments.
Moreover, the report noted lack of progress on
anti-corruption issues and regression in terms of legislation on public
procurement. The latter criticism concerns a controversial public procurement
bill, signed into law on Aug. 1 2012, that essentially absolves state-owned
companies from holding competitive tenders. This resulted in the EU temporarily
freezing financial assistance to Ukraine.
Nonetheless, the report reaffirmed the EU’s
commitment to signing the Association Agreement, as soon as Ukraine makes
progress in three areas: remedying the shortcomings noted during the October
2012 parliamentary elections, addressing the issue of selective justice and
preventing its recurrence, and action on implementing reforms set in the
Association Agenda.
EU leaders have repeatedly stressed their hopes
the Association Agreement can be signed at an Eastern Partnership summit this
November in Vilnius, Lithuania. However, it will depend on Kyiv’s efforts.
Bilateral relations have been severely
strained by the imprisonment of opposition figures like former Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko and former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko. They did not
improve after Tymoshenko’s top defender Serhiy Vlasenko was removed from
parliament and stripped of prosecutorial immunity in the wake of long delayed
EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels in February.
As a result, Europe is slowly losing patience.
Speaking at an Economist Conference in Vienna on March 19, the EU delegation
head Jan Tombinski warned that new challenges could quickly eclipse the
Association Agreement if it is not signed at the November meeting.
“If we miss the target of November 2013, I
will bet there will not be an extension of two or three months more,” Tombinski
said, adding that 2014 will be extremely busy for the EU, notably with
parliamentary elections and the question of the United Kingdom’s membership to
deal with. Then come presidential elections in Ukraine in 2015, the EU
ambassdor added, a further change to the landscape.
“Our leadership has invested a serious political capital, but the EU
won’t risk this political capital twice, if it does not see the specific
results,” Tombinski concluded. “(If the deal is not signed in November) I don’t see big chances that the Association
Agreement is still there three years from now.”
Kyiv Post editor Jakub Parusinski can be
reached at [email protected]
