It will be the largest state in the European Union; It will be the first founding republic of the former Soviet Union to join the European club, but Ukraine will still need many years of reforms to do so. The negotiation process that is now beginning must bring the country into line with 28,000 community standards and lead a tough dispute that has already begun over its status as an agricultural power. And above all, it must first find a suitable future member who is in permanent conflict with Russia, whose territory is probably partially occupied by the Kremlin's weapons.
The announcement this Thursday that Brussels is officially starting negotiations with Ukraine about EU accession was greeted with joy in Kiev. “It is a victory for Ukraine, a victory for all of Europe, a victory that motivates, inspires and strengthens,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky. Your country has been knocking on the doors of the European brotherhood since 1993, but only now, when Russia unleashed the invasion to dismantle its state in 2022, did the EU assume that the stability of the continent depends on Ukrainian integration as the umbrella of its democracy and well-being .
Ukraine needs good news. The war is expected to last a long time and there is no sign that areas occupied by Russian troops will be recaptured until at least 2025, the conflict's main analysts say. On the government side, both Prime Minister Denis Shmihal and Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs Olga Stefanishina have assured that their country can become a member of the EU in two years. “We need to give citizens a realistic picture, not dreams,” Victoria Melnik, director of the European Integration Program at the Center for Political and Legal Reforms of Ukraine, said of these statements at a conference last October. “The negotiations will take years. This must be taken into account to avoid frustration. “It certainly won’t take a few years,” added Jennes de Mol, Dutch ambassador to Kiev.
The Ukrainian government has made targeted reforms of a large number of laws over the last two years, so that the European Council can decide on them this Thursday. Stefanishina detailed on her social networks that the Ukrainian judicial authority has already introduced 1,625 community standards. Ivan Nagorniak, deputy director of the government's Office for European Integration, said in October that these 1,600 standards were needed from the start in order to begin negotiations, but there were still 28,000 to be integrated. And as De Mol pointed out, it's not just a matter of Ukrainian regulatory laws approving them, “it will be necessary to see how they are applied, and that takes time.”
The European Commission and most EU governments were sympathetic to Ukraine. Important demands that were made to start negotiations were half met. Two examples: Last week Zelensky signed the reform of four laws demanded by Brussels. Three of them are related to strengthening anti-corruption authorities. Both the opposition and civil rights organizations have denounced that the reform continues to make changes to the criminal code that make it more difficult for a judge to investigate cases of corruption in public office.
Another law reformed by Zelensky protected the rights of national minorities in Ukraine. The President assured that the legislative changes follow the recommendations of the Venice Commission. This requires that the Russian language be protected in Ukraine, as enshrined in the Constitution. However, the reformed minority law has exactly the opposite effect and permanently excludes them from the public, school and the media.
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Ukraine's possible integration into the EU will require profound changes in several areas in a country that, if it has an ideology at all, as Zelensky has defended, it is libertarianism, the prioritization of individual freedom over minimal government intervention. At conferences in October on Ukraine's integration into the EU, Oleksander Saienko, former reform minister during Petro Poroshenko's presidency (2014-2019), emphasized the need to change the Ukrainian mentality that state intervention is negative: “Now is The priority is to create a competent and less corrupt civil service. Doing this effectively is the key to accessing the EU.” If there is one thing Ukrainians fear in their desire to be part of the EU, it is, according to this newspaper's numerous interviews with citizens over the last year Bureaucracy, the rules that have to be passed every day. Daily basis, be it in the tax area. , work or in commercial production.
Probably one of the big battles Ukraine will have to fight to become part of the EU will be defending its agricultural sector against the interests of other large producers. Although the country is waging a war against Russia in which its very existence is at stake, its neighbors Slovakia, Poland and Hungary have vetoed imports of certain Ukrainian products, particularly grain, on the grounds that they constitute unfair competition . The same thing happened in the transport sector. Trade unions from these countries complain that the working conditions of Ukrainian transporters, from salaries to rest periods, or the uncontrolled use of pesticides in their fields, are incompatible with the European common market. The borders with Poland have been blocked for more than a month due to protests. It's just a taste of what's to come.
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