Bad faith creeping into EU-Ukraine relations

BRUSSELS - EU ministers will next week debate the impact of the gas war on Russia and Ukraine relations. But in the meantime, Ukraine itself is cooling toward the EU, after feeling abandoned in the crisis and cheated in visa and EU accession talks.

EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday (26 January) will at lunch discuss how to promote stability in Russia and Ukraine, one week after the pair ended a gas price dispute which caused the worst energy crisis in EU history.

The Czech EU presidency wants the meeting to reinforce the "Eastern Partnership" - a package of trade and political initiatives designed to pull Ukraine and five other post-Soviet states closer to the EU.

The task may not be easy in the current atmosphere. Last week, the European Commission threatened Moscow and Kiev with sanctions. Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was easier to do business with African states than Russia or Ukraine.

But if Brussels feels let down by Kiev, the feeling is mutual, after EU states declined to support either side in what Ukraine sees as a Russian "gas attack" designed to destabilise its economy and pro-Western leadership.

"We are afraid the EU could become a weapon of political pressure on Ukraine in the hands of Russia," Ukraine deputy foreign minister Konstantin Yeliseyev told EUobserver. "As a result of this conflict the EU may yet take measures to make Ukraine seem guilty."

"There is a feeling the EU could have done more," analyst Volodymyr Yermolenko of Kiev-based NGO Internews-Ukraine said. "Russia's two huge lies - first, that Ukraine had stolen gas and second that it cut transit to Europe - were not clearly refuted by the EU."

Visa problem lingers

At the popular level, any fresh disappointment with Brussels is compounded by long-running problems with basic consular services.

Since 2005 EU citizens can travel to Ukraine with no visa. But ordinary Ukrainians pay steep fees for travel permits, have to deal with intermediary agencies, fill out complex paperwork and face frequent refusal with no explanation.

"The prestige of the EU is still high in Ukraine but it is being undermined by lack of progress on visa issues," Mr Yeliseyev said.

At the diplomatic level, Kiev late last year discovered the EU is offering softer legal conditions for Russia than for Ukraine in visa facilitation talks, reinforcing suspicion of a Brussels-Moscow special relationship.

Bad faith has also crept into Ukraine's most important post-Orange Revolution foreign policy project - to get on the road to EU membership.

The then French EU presidency at an EU-Ukraine summit in Paris last September launched negotiations on an Association Agreement to be signed with Ukraine in late 2009.

The summit's non-binding declaration spoke of Ukraine as a "European country" with "European aspirations," recalling the enlargement language of article 49 of the EU treaty, which states that "any European state ...may apply to become a member of the union."

Enlargement gag

But behind the show of friendship, France made Ukraine agree to zero pro-enlargement language in the legally-binding preamble to the upcoming Association Agreement, freezing any talk of accession until the treaty expires 10 or more years down the line.

Officially, the pro-enlargement language question can still be revived, with Mr Yeliseyev saying that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed" on the pact.

But behind the scenes, Kiev feels the EU is happy to let it fend for itself in a post-Soviet arena that just last year saw full blown military conflict between Russia and a non-compliant state.

"That [the Paris EU-Russia summit] was a real turning point. Even the last euro-romantics had to give up hope," a Ukrainian contact said.