Ukraine and the EU: Lessons Learned and Tasks Ahead

Abstract

Over the past few years, numerous conferences have been held and studies written on the relationship between Ukraine and the European Union. As it became clearer that Ukraine was a late reformer with highly instable political institutions and murky finances, analysts and Western policymakers became increasingly preoccupied with the notion of Ukraine as risk to the West. It became fashionable to write about Ukraine as begetting weapons of mass destruction, illegal migration, organized crime and its corollaries (traffic in drugs and women), diseases (HIV and tuberculosis) and environmental pollution.² The events of 11 September have reinforced the preoccupation of EU policy makers with security-related issues, further detracting from Eastern Europe and related processes of integration. This paper, in contrast, argues that taking hard and soft security issues as the starting point for the analysis of Ukrainian-EU relations is misguided and will not amount to a viable basis for long-term policymaking. Hence, the paper takes an integrationist perspective and considers the internal developments of Ukraine as the major determinants for its opportunities to integrate into European structures. The paper will propose various scenarios for the future of Ukraine, before putting the EU’s policy towards Ukraine under scrutiny. Finally, it will sketch out policy recommendations intended to deepen interdependence between Ukraine and the EU.