The European Union as the Key 

to the Development of 

Stable Democracy in Ukraine

Opening Address of the Model Ukraine CUPP Conference in Ottawa by Derek Fraser, Former Canadian Ambassador in Ukraine

I feel honoured to be asked to open the Model Ukraine White Paper Committee Workshop.  You, the interns and alumniof the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program, represent the best that Ukraine has to offer of politically engaged youth. You are the future of Ukraine. The internship programme is in many ways a better introduction to Western democratic practice than any course in political science. It is easy to dismiss from a distanceWestern political theory as a composite of Sunday truths, as ideals espoused, but not practised. It is another thing to experience the democratic reality with all its strengths and weaknesses.

I propose to examine the challenges Ukraine is facing in adopting democracy. I wish then to consider how, regardless of the outcome of the Vilnius Summit on 28-29 November at which the EU will take the decision on whether to sign the Association Agreement, including a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), with Ukraine, the EU and the West can help Ukraine along the long road towards a stable democracy.

In order to understand the challenges that Ukraine is facing, let us examine what, in  the Ukrainian experience is similar  to the historyof other European countries, and what is particularly Ukrainian.

First let us look at the common elements:

•     In the first place, the evolution towards a stable democracy can last a long time. It took the French a hundred years.

•     It is also normal for countries trying democracy for the first time to suffer, in some cases, repeated relapses into authoritarianism. The list of states that reverted to dictatorship in the twentieth century is long. It encompasses most of the countries of Central and Southern Europe and the Balkans.

•     Since the Second World War, most states that have made a smooth transition to democracy, have succeeded in doing so so because they were seeking membership in the European Union.

While the difficulties that Ukraine has faced, therefore, in moving toward democracy, have their parallels in the history of Western European countries, there are other factors that can make the Ukrainian path longer and harder.

•     Ukraine was less  affected than the Central European countries, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland by the evolution over the past five hundred years of Western Europe from authoritarianism to pluralism.

•     Ukraine had lttle tradition of   the separation of powers or the rule of law.

•     Ukraine also had no living memory of a market economy. 

•     At the moment of its declaration of independence, it also lacked much of the apparatus of a state.

•     In addition, Ukraine had little previous history as an independent country so as to give it a sense of national cohesion.

•     Most importantly, unlike many European states, Ukraine has not, up until now, been shepherded by an offer of EU membership.

•     Instead, Ukraine faces at times severe pressure from Russia in seeking to block Ukraine’s move towards democracy and the West, and to force Ukraine into Russia’s economic and security organizations. I shall return to the issue of Russian pressure further on in my remarks.

All of these elements suggest that, without the West’s, and especially the EU’s  support and protection, Ukraine will find it hard to proceed smoothly to  a stable democracy.

These factors also emphasize the importance of the Vilnius Summit on 28-29 November at which the EU will take the decision on whether to sign with Ukraine the Association Agreement, including a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).

If the Association Agreement is signed all very well and good. I think, however, that we must also reckon with the possibility that Yuliya Tymoshenko may not be released, and the Association Agreement may not be signed at Vilnius. I wish, therefore, to consider what the policies the EU might adopt, with or without signature of the Agreement, to promote the integration of Ukraine into Europe.

As you may know, on 18 November,the European Parliament is to consider whether it can approve, on the basis of reforms carried out by Ukraine by then, in addition to the Association Agreement, a Provisional Association Agreement that would bring into force, according to the Foreign Minister of Lithuania, around 90 percent of the free trade terms and more than half of the political part of the Agreement, pending  formal ratification of the Agreementby the 28 member states of the EU.

Should Yuliya Tymoshenko not be released by 18 November, the EU Parliament might not have confidence that, should such an unusually generous  Provisional Agreement come into force under those circumstances, President Yanukovych could  be relied upon to carry out the further political reforms necessary for formal ratification, a procedure that, in any case, may take over two years, placing ratification beyond the next Presidential election in 2015, an election that President Yanukovych is determined to win by fair means or foul.

Should the Association Agreement and the Provisional Agreement not be signed, what is important is that the EU should then have an alternative policy to support Ukraine and keep the Association Agreement alive for a later signature. EU officials have claimed that if Vilnius ends in failure, the Agreement with Ukraine will not be reconsidered until 2015. If this position is anything more than a negotiating tactic, it is a recipe for disaster. We have to recognize that Ukraine can only become fully democratic, if it remains independent. The West cannot afford a situation in which an increasingly dictatorial Ukraine, possibly facing a severe economic crisis, has no one to turn to other than Russia.

As a result, even without the Provisional Agreement, the EU will still need a Ukrainian policy that supports the country’s independence and pushes it towards democracy. This policy should include formal understandings with Ukraine that present believable conditional offers by the EU, in return for accountable undertakings by Ukraine.

It has been suggested that the EU might consider:

•     Moving ahead with the Free Trade Area,

•     Negotiating visa-free access to the EU. 

•     Assisting in modernizing the Gas Transit Pipeline bringing Russian gas to Europe.

Canada should continue to  play its part in helping Ukraine:

•     Canada might proceed with the negotiation of its free trade agreement with Ukraine in parallel with the EU negotiations. Please note, however, that in June, the Canadian government suspended its free-trade negotiations with Ukraine because Canada was dissatisfied with Ukraine’s attempt to renegotiate with the World Trade Organization hundreds of tariff reductions to which Ukraine had committed itself when it joined the WTO in 2008.

•     Canada should continue to support any genuine efforts by Ukraine at political and economic reform.

•     It should continue to encourage the development of the Ukrainian civil society.

The West as a whole will have to provide considerable economic support provided that Ukraine is prepared to reform its economy. The West may soon have to bail Ukraine out in order to forestall a possible currency collapse and sovereign default. Timothy Ash of the Standard Bank has noted that Ukraine now needs to find around $75 billion, a sum that is more than three times its foreign exchange reserves. The Economist judges that Ukraine is highly vulnerable to a freeze on further foreign borrowing. Timothy Ash has suggested that the hyrvnia may come under extreme pressure even before the November summit.

Ukraine has sought $14.3 billion from the IMF. Negotiations have, however, been stalled since April, because of Ukraine’s refusal to carry/remove the subsidy on the price of gas. They will be renewed on 19 October.

The EU will likely have to offer more financial aid to Ukraine to carry out the required reforms. Candidate countries  for membership in the EU benefit from expert advice and generous EU financial assistance to adapt laws and regulations to EU standards. Ukraine will apparently be provided with the advice, but not the money. This EU‘s curent position is likely to prove untenable. It is estimated, for example, that the cost of implementation of the EU directive on large combustion plants could be as much as half of Ukraine’s annual budget.

As part of their assistance for integrating Ukraine into Europe, the EU, and the West as a whole, will also need to support Ukraine against likely Russian pressure.

According to Russia’s national strategy, as described by Ruslan Pukhov, the Director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies last August at Putin’s Valdai Discussion Group, Russia’s renaissance as a great power requires the restoration of its dominance over other former Soviet republics. Furthermore, Russian defence strategy provides for the possible use of military force against the former Soviet republics to protect Russian national interests.

As to Russian policy towards Ukraine, Putin has repeatedly described the Russians and Ukrainians as being one people. He recently declared that Ukraine and Russia would eventually reunite despite all odds, and attempts by the European Union to pull the two apart.

Putin elaborated on his views on Ukraine in his conversation with President Bush in April, 2008 at the NATO Bucharest Summit, about seven weeks before the outbreak of the Russo-Georgian war. Putin reportedly warned President Bush that, if NATO put Ukraine and Georgia on the path to membership, Russia might respond by instigating the partition of Ukraine and recognizing the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia.  Putin told Bush that Ukraine was “not a real nation,” that much of its territory had been “given away” by Russia. Ukraine would “cease to exist as a state” if it joined NATO.

At the Yalta European Strategy Summit in September, President Putin’s chief economic adviser Sergey Glazyev stated that if Ukraine signed the Association Agreement, it would violate the Treaty on Strategic Partnership and Friendship with Russia. Then Russia could no longer guarantee Ukraine’s status as a state and could possibly intervene if pro-Russian regions of the country appealed directly to Moscow.

Russia has in the past massively interfered in some Ukrainian elections, and applied economic pressure by manipulating the gas price.

Should Ukraine sign the Preliminary Association Agreement at the Vilnius Summit, we may see Russia launch against Ukraine a economic attack that, without help from the West, could lead to a serious economic crisis. Russia takes about one quarter of Ukrainian exports. From the 14 to 19 August, the Russian Customs Service halted the import of all Ukrainian goods. When the boycott was lifted, Sergey Glazyev stated that Ukraine could expect worse if it went ahead with the Association Agreement.

Russia could direct a  gas war against Ukraine. Europe may have to increase its exports of gas to Ukraine to make up for any shortfall from Russia.

Russian pressure is likely also to be political. Putin is building up and financing Viktor Medvedchuk apparently so as to be a candidate in the 2015 Ukrainian Presidential Election. Putin, and the wife of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, are the godparents of Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Putin might, under certain circumstances, also encourage the secession of certain regions of Ukraine. When the nationalist Viktor Yushchenko was president, the Ukrainian government complained that Russia was supporting a separatist movement in Trans-Carpathia and issuing Russian passports to Ukrainian residents in the Crimea. It was the presence of Russian passport holders in Georgia’s secessionist territories that Russia used to justify its support for them in its war with Georgia. Russia is quite capable of creating legally ambiguous unrest in the Crimea and possibly other areas.

If the movement of Ukraine towards the EU, therefore, is to succeed, the EU and the West may have to provide indefinite and substantial political and economic support for Ukraine.

Ultimately, however, the only way to put an end to Russia’s claims on Ukraine may be the further step-wise integration of Russia into the Euro-Atlantic world in return for an abandonment of its imperial visions and an adoption of democracy.

My excursion into the realm of international politics has taken me away from your role as pioneers of democracy. It is you on the ground who can exert an influence in favour of political and economic reform, of honesty, of democracy, justice and human rights. 

Do not be discouraged by the inevitable reversals of fortune. Let me remind you of the opening line of the Polish National Anthem: “Poland is not lost.” This anthem has inspired the Poles to resist, to fight, and to overcome. Ukraine is also not lost, and due, in part to your efforts, the cause of democracy in Ukraine will ultimately prevail. I wish you success in your deliberations.

PHOTO

Derek Fraser, Former Canadian Ambassador in Ukraine