Olga Brileva. Ukraine between two chairs

Ukraine between two chairs
Olga Brileva

Date of publication: October 6, 2003

Despite the fact that the size of Ukrainian seats is the talk of the town, there are still some doubts that Ukraine will be able to sit in both the SES and the EU.

Ukraine is eager to join the European Union, where it is not very welcome. Just the other day they once again hinted at us about our snout and their Kalash line. In response to this , Leonid Danilych gave an interview where every word is gold. “I met with the Commissioner for EU Enlargement, a very nice person. We had a meeting and we liked each other. I said what I thought, and he said half of what he wanted to say,” the President explains in his simplicity. No, the Ukrainian stage has lost even more in our President than Ukrainian politics has lost in him. But in general, we were not recognized as a country with a market economy, and we pretended that we didn’t really want to.

In fact, let's not pretend - I really wanted to, to the point of trembling. But it couldn't. In order for the members of the European Union to even sit down with Ukraine on the same hectare (not to mention at the negotiating table), it is necessary to make a number of changes to the legislation, bringing it at least somewhat to the “European standard”. In particular, the legal framework for the work of local government bodies does not correspond to it. At the 9th All-Ukrainian municipal hearings, L.D. Kuchma said that the time to carry out this reform has come. “I believe that the solution to all (municipal) problems requires a transition in the future to the second stage of political reform, a comprehensive reform of the territorial organization of power,” the president said.

But Kuchma became famous (including in Europe) as a person who never does anything that is unprofitable for him/his clan personally - no matter how much the country needs it. And it is now beneficial for Kuchma to extend his presidential term, and therefore games are actively going on in the Verkhovna Rada around the Law on Amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine. And it is precisely in this regard that Kuchma’s phrase that he intends to adjust local self-government to the “European standard” is very important. Because the person who does this (and one of the EU’s important requirements for its associated members is, for example, the payback of the fuel and energy complex) will be a political dead man. And it won’t be Kuchma - because such an event cannot be held in the time left for Leonid Danilych before the elections. This will be his successor.

Or it won’t - if Parliament agrees to extend Kuchma’s term of office. Of course, it may very well be that I suspect the President of excessive Machiavellianism and his reform is just a petty dirty trick, a kind of “slamming the door”... But in any case, it is now beneficial for Kuchma to play a “European-oriented” president.

But he has to play in the absence of a partner. On the eve of the Ukraine-EU summit, which will take place on October 7-8 in Yalta, there are still no promises from Europe regarding associated membership of Ukraine. And, contrary to the optimism of Alexander Chaly, this issue is not on the agenda of the summit, and it is unlikely that we will be able to take Europe by the bootstraps and shake out of it the necessary solution.

Of course, there is also the “Wider Europe” option: Ukraine’s gradual entry into the EU’s internal market, easier visa regimes, free movement of goods and people... but in the way of this agreement stands a new economic and political reality: the agreement on the Single Economic Space. Norbert Justin, head of the European Commission's representative office in Ukraine, hints that Ukraine, after ratification of this treaty by Parliament, may have problems with joining the WTO and free trade with the European Union.

So what do we have? A president who benefits from playing the “European” card. The parliament, which is considered so “presidential” that the opposition is categorically against the President being elected by the Verkhovna Rada, “majoritarian deputies, who make up the second half of the parliament, were actually not elected, but appointed by representatives of the authorities” (words of Alexander Moroz according to Correspondent. net). The SES Treaty, which must be ratified by this parliament. And the summit, which will take place the other day in Yalta.

So is it surprising that the Head of the Presidential Administration, Viktor Medvedchuk, predicts difficulties in ratifying the agreement on the formation of the Common Economic Space by the Verkhovna Rada? If only these difficulties did not exist! After all, officials of the European Commission make it clear that the SES and the EU are incompatible things, even despite the reservations with which Ukraine signed the SES agreement (the agreement will be ratified only to the extent that does not contradict the Constitution, legislation and international treaties of Ukraine).

The anti-presidential opposition (especially Our Ukraine) calls the agreement on the SES a betrayal of the national interests of Ukraine. The signing of the agreement on the SES personally did not cost Kuchma anything - but it allowed him to put a good face on the other heads of state of the CIS. And if the agreement fails, then the Parliament will again be to blame, and not the white and fluffy President (who is now trying his best to play the completely unrealistic European card).

“Ukraine is integrating into the Common Economic Space to the extent that it is compatible with its European integration aspirations,” says Ukrainian Foreign Minister Anatoly Zlenko. In a word, we are ready to be pregnant only to the extent that we can preserve our innocence.