The EU will be watching the Sept. 30 vote closely and hopes that a government will be formed soon after elections.
While high-ranking EU officials urged Kyiv to hold democratic elections and quickly form a coalition, the timing of the summit was not related to the imminent poll, according to analysts. They said that the EU will be watching the Sept. 30 vote closely, but that the next major hurdle Ukraine needs to clear in order to realize its aspirations of inking a free trade agreement with the EU, and eventual membership, is the country’s WTO accession.
The annual bilateral meetings between the presidents of Ukraine and the EU were established by the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement that was ratified in 1998. That agreement is expected to be replaced by a “new enhanced agreement” after Ukraine joins the WTO.
The European side was represented by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and High Representative Javier Solana, a familiar face for Ukrainians because of his active involvement in resolving the political crisis during the 2004 Orange Revolution.
The meeting was hosted by President Viktor Yushchenko, but European leaders took the time to meet all of the country’s major political leaders.
“The fact that we are here … is real proof of our relationship, our trust in the development of your country, in the future of your country, in free and fair elections and the possibility of having a government as soon as possible,” Solana said after the summit.
Summit as stepping stone
“Summits do not necessarily result in the signing of some long-term documents” explained Valeriy Chaly, deputy director of the Razumkov Centre, a Kyiv-based think tank. He said that the Sept. 14 meeting served more as a forum for communication at the highest level.
“The very fact that [the] summit was conducted on the eve of the elections is evidence of the EU’s attention and hope for advancing reforms in Ukraine,” Chaly said.
“We didn’t expect any breakthroughs from the summit,” confessed Oleksandr Sushko, director of the Center for Peace, Conversion and Foreign Policy of Ukraine, a Kyiv-based NGO.
“The meeting was necessary to discuss issues of potential concern regarding a new enhanced agreement [between Ukraine and the EU] before the fifth round of negotiations takes place. That was accomplished,” Sushko said.
“Secondly, ratification and full implementation of visa facilitation and readmission agreements were discussed. We can see that the political will is in place for these agreements to begin working on Jan. 1 of next year.”
In a joint summit statement, EU and Ukrainian leaders reaffirmed their intentions “to embark upon negotiations on a comprehensive Free Trade Area as a core element of the new enhanced agreement.”
WTO hurdle
According to Sushko, four rounds of negotiations on the new enhanced agreement have already been conducted. The fifth round is expected to take place in October.
“Yet, the process is irregular, because we haven’t started the official negotiations on the free trade area, which is an indispensable part of the new enhanced agreement. The European side is waiting for Ukraine’s accession to the WTO to start negotiations,” Sushko explained.
Ukraine announced plans to join WTO by the end of this year. The target date, however, has changed many times resulting in undermined confidence in Ukraine’s WTO declarations.
Ukraine has been negotiating WTO entry for 13 years.
After the EU and US granted Ukraine market economy status in 2005 and 2006 respectively, many Ukrainian politicians said that the issue of WTO membership would be resolved very soon.
In May 2007, First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Mykola Azarov announced that “formally, Ukraine has fulfilled all its obligations to the working party on joining the WTO.”
Ukraine has signed bilateral agreements with all necessary WTO-member countries except for Kyrgyzstan which remains a potential obstacle. The Central Asian republic claims that Ukraine owes it a Soviet-era debt worth $28 million.
Meanwhile, experts argue that internal opposition to WTO entry among Ukrainian leaders is the real reason why the issue has yet to be resolved. Some have suggested that Russia is not keen on seeing Ukraine join the transnational trade body before the mighty northern neighbor; and that the current government was delaying WTO membership in order to synchronize it with Russia.
Some have suggested legislation passed by Ukraine for WTO membership still needs to be revised. If so, it will be up to the newly-elected parliament to fix the legislation. Ukraine’s working group is then expected to submit a draft final report to the WTO’s General Council for a final decision. According to the WTO website, meetings of the transnational trade body’s General Council are scheduled for Oct. 9-10 and Dec. 19-20 of this year.
