In Kyiv and
some eastern EU capitals, there are many who would like see the agreement
signed irrespective of whether Tymoshenko is free. Even some in the West regard
Brussels’s position as too strict. They argue that the agreement is also important
for the EU and thus, needs to be signed. But such demands are unhelpful for
three reasons.
First,
whatever one may think about the geopolitics of Eastern Europe, some EU member
countries will not agree to move forward with signing the agreement as long as
Tymoshenko is in jail. All 28 member states must consent for the agreement to
be concluded. So Ukraine’s recent public relations campaigns and diplomatic
initiatives in Brussels make little sense: The opinions even of the presidents
of the European Council, Commission and Parliament are of secondary importance when
it comes to the Association Agreement. Mobilizing the current Ukrainian
government’s few remaining supporters in eastern EU countries or hiring retired
Western politicians for PR campaigns is equally useless. It will do
little to alleviate skepticism towards Ukraine, especially in Western Europe.
The
Tymoshenko case is one of the few topics that the Western public knows about
Ukraine. To most Europeans, Ukraine is a white spot on Europe’s map associated
with “Dynamo Kyiv,” “Chornobyl,” and “Klitschko.” Knowledge of Ukrainian
politics rarely goes beyond the fact that the “beautiful woman with braids” is
in jail. An
additional problem for the Ukrainian government is that Tymoshenko’s
party Batkivshchyna has an official observer status with the European People’s
Party – the all-European of center-right parties that rule many EU countries
today.
To those West
European elites with some knowledge about Ukraine, the argument for
Tymoshenko’s imprisonment was ultimately discredited by the recent European
Court of Human Rights ruling. It always seemed suspicious that, under President
Viktor Yanukovych, Ukrainian opposition leaders like Tymoshenko and Yuri
Lutsenko were prosecuted for alleged misconduct, but prominent ruling party
members were not. Kyiv has always argued the West should respect the fact that
a Ukrainian court, after due trial, decided to put Tymoshenko in jail. But for
most in the West the ECHR ruling once more confirmed that there had never been a
proper legal trial, and Tymoshenko’s sentence had not been passed by a court deserving that name.
Second,
there is, in Kyiv and also some EU capitals, an argument that the EU should
show flexibility with regard to Ukraine, which is not perfect but – as a
post-totalitarian country – deserves leeway. This view ignores the surprising
concessions that the EU has already made with regard to Yanukovych’s numerous
violations of basic democratic principles. For example, the flagrant disregard for
Ukrainian voters, shown by the formation of the first 2010 Azarov government
with the help of mandate-changers (known as “tushki”), was never a sticking
point for Brussels.
Also in
2010, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court changed Ukraine’s basic law, and gave the
president much larger competences than Yanukovych had received when being
elected several months earlier. Brussels neither made the procedure of amending
Ukraine’s Constitution an issue, nor did it demand new presidential elections.
That the EU is today ready to negotiate with a president whose many powers lack
proper democratic legitimacy is a big concession. By accepting these and other
scandalous transgressions, the EU has already, to an unusual degree, watered
down its basic principles. Against this background demands for more softening,
e.g. that Tymoshenko may stay in jail, look bizarre.
A third,
related argument has recently been voiced by Guenter Verheugen, a German former
EU Commissioner. Verheugen noted that it is not membership, but merely
association which is at stake, and Brussels should not use double standards toward
Ukraine. However, this argument not only overlooks the numerous
allowances already made, it also ignores the novel quality of the EU-Ukraine Association
Agreement. This
pact may share a name with earlier treaties between the EU and third
countries. But the Ukrainian agreement goes much further, significantly integrating
Ukraine’s economy and politics into Europe’s. Moreover, even the less ambitious
earlier association agreements were not given out for free. It is true that the
EEC’s first Association Agreement of 1961 was concluded with an only partially
democratic Greece. But this agreement was frozen by Brussels in 1967 after a
military coup. When, in 1962, Franco’s Spain asked for an association
agreement, it was firmly rejected by Brussels. When Romania’s democratization process
was souring in the early 1990s, Brussels even halted, for a while, the signing
of a much smaller cooperation agreement with Bucharest.
The EU has
already gone out of its way by initialing the largest agreement in its history
with as dubious a polity as Ukraine is today. The only way for Kyiv to get the
agreement signed is to free Tymoshenko. Yanukovych will also have to show
“tangible progress” in fulfilling the other prerequisites, and make sure to not
open up entirely new issues, for instance, by curtailing press freedom. Whoever
thinks that it’s possible to get around these conditions is simply daydreaming.
Andreas Umland, professor of political science
at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, special for the Kyiv Post.
