Most Europeans are currently suffering from what is commonly termed as enlargement fatigue, a political malaise caused by the sudden digestion of twelve new EU members in the space of the past few years. The symptoms include fears over uncontrolled immigration from the new member states, anger at the cost of bringing infrastructures up to scratch and a general unwillingness to consider the idea of inviting yet more countries to join the EU club.
Never the right time
It is hardly, therefore, the ideal time to begin discussing closer ties between Kyiv and Brussels. But then again, there has yet to be a good time to raise this particular subject. Of all the countries waiting in the EU wings, Ukraine is traditionally regarded as being one of the very last in the pecking order. According to accepted wisdom there are plenty of other more deserving cases, all of which make for seemingly better headlines.
Bringing the nations of the western Balkans into the EU fold would mark the triumph of modern European values following the civil wars of the 1990s, while the need to assure secularism in Turkey is a cause of global importance that most Brussels politicians are keen to support.
When viewed against this backdrop of noble causes, Ukraine’s case for EU membership might seem somewhat muted. However, this is to ignore the scale of the progress the country has made in recent years and the distance it has placed between itself and the rest of the CIS.
Worthy of broader recognition
Millions of Ukrainians risked all in 2004 for the right to free and fair elections. They now have that right and they are using it. In the three national votes to have been held since the Orange Revolution, the majority of the electorate has generally sided with the parties or candidates promising rule of law and greater European integration.
The post-election defection of the Socialists in 2006 may have created the false impression of a volatile and undecided electorate, but a close investigation of the figures reveals that this is simply not the case. Instead, the more Western-oriented parties have had overall better results at the ballot box and with Ukraine’s younger voters tending to favour Orange policies this trend is only likely to grow more pronounced over the coming years.
The EU has played a role in this transformation, but until recently it has rarely offered any tangible benefits to the Ukrainian people or gone further than making encouraging noises. With the Schengen zone now extending to Ukraine’s western borders, Kyiv has never been in a better position to push for more from Brussels. Full membership may still be a pipedream, but the promise of closer ties would be a sign that the struggle for democracy has not been in vain.
The EU’s eastern bulwark
Unsurprisingly, the most vocal supporters of greater Ukrainian European integration are to be found among the EU’s former Warsaw Pact member states, whose own experience of Moscow-based totalitarian rule make them more sympathetic to the challenges facing Ukraine and more likely to be impressed by the country’s recent progress.
Unfortunately they face an uphill struggle convincing the population of western European that what the EU needs is a giant new member with close on fifty million citizens, but with one-party rule now firmly re-established in neighbouring Russia and the 1990s dream of spreading democracy in apparent disarray, there is much to be said for bolstering the democratic gains in Kyiv.
Ultimately Ukraine could come to serve as the EU’s bulwark against the ocean of authoritarianism which stretches away to the east, but for the time being a ground-breaking free trade agreement would be a very welcome development indeed and an indication that the country’s future is very much as part of the wider European community from which it has been fenced off for so long.
