All European Union member state have now ratified the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, and while EU membership is still a distant prospect for Ukraine, the completion of the ratification process paves the way for a free trade regime between Ukraine and EU to take effect on Jan. 1, 2016.
The local parliament in Brussels was the last to ratify the Association Agreement and thus complete the process, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Nov. 20 wrote on Twitter, hailing the landmark in the nation’s efforts to integrate with Western institutions. In Belgium, international accords needed approval of local elected bodies to take effect.
The agreement incorporates Ukraine in the internal market of the European Union in a step-by-step process as the nation meets the conditions laid out in the free-trade agreement.
But the deal is about more than free-trade, increased competition and Ukrainian lard reaching dinner plates in other European countries. The more than 1,000 page document establishes a “political association” between Ukraine and the EU, legally binding Ukraine to adopt EU norms in a range of areas, including regulation and technical standards.
The ratification was completed at a symbolic moment, on the second anniversary of the announcement by then Prime Minister Mykola Avarov that deal was to be put on ice, just days before the then President Viktor Yanukovych was to have signed the agreement at a EU Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius.
The decision not to engage in association with the EU was influenced by Russia, which had waged a campaign against the deal and imposed import restrictions on Ukrainian goods to pressure the country to turn away from its path of European integration.
The halting of the association agreement sparked pro-European demonstrations urging the authorities to sign it. Many protesters associated the agreement with choosing an open, democratic model of western society, based on the rule of law – much in contrast to the graft and cronyism in Ukraine and authoritarianism in Russia.
The hope was that the EU-agreement would prove a motor for change in a nation, where even hitherto influential tycoons saw the president’s inner circle strip them of assets in hostile takeovers estimated at billions of dollars.
Over time, the protesters said, transparent western rule-based procedures would replace post-Soviet regulation, seen as obsolete, overly bureaucratic and allowing indiscriminate abuse of power and obstruction of justice.
The protests in turn led to the EuroMaidan Revolution, which culminated in Feb. 2014 with Yanukovych fleeing the country.
The political part of the Association Agreement was subsequently signed on March 21, 2014 by the interim government. The economic part was signed by the newly elected President Poroshenko on June 27, 2014. The accords were simultaneous ratified by the Ukraine’s legislature and the European parliament on Sep. 16, 2014.
The free-trade part of the accord was originally set to take effect by the end of 2014. Continued Russian pressure, however, led to the implementation being postponed until January 2016, a decision Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said was welcome, as it provided the nation’s economy more time to adjust to increased competition in the EU market.
Russia declared that if the EU-Ukraine free-trade arrangement was launched by January 2016, Moscow would have to end its free-trade regime with Ukraine. The Kremlin’s repeated concern was that EU-origin goods would fraudulently be re-exported to Russia, opening a backdoor for unfair dumping of EU-produce in Russia.
Moscow has said it will impose a trade embargo on Ukrainian goods when the Association Agreement comes into effect at the begining of next year.
