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UKRAINIAN PARTIES MARK MAY DAY. Some 10,000 people took part in a rally organized by the Communist Party in Kyiv on 1 May, "Ukrayinska pravda" reported. The rally took place under anti-NATO, anti-EU, and antigovernment slogans. Participants in the rally supported a resolution proposing Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko as a presidential candidate. Some 10,000 people participated in a separate May Day rally organized in Kyiv by the Party of Regions led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. A karaoke organized on a square in Kyiv by Our Ukraine attracted only some 200 primarily young people. According to "Ukrayinska pravda," mass May Day rallies were also staged in the provinces, where pro-government parties reportedly resorted to administrative leverage to get people into the streets. In particular, 35,000 people celebrated May Day in Kharkiv and 12,000 in Simferopol. JM

WILL UKRAINIAN COMMUNISTS, SOCIALISTS FIELD COMMON PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE? Yosyp Vinskyy, one of the leaders of the Socialist Party, said on 1 May that his party and the Communist Party might nominate a single candidate for the 31 October presidential election, Interfax reported. "It is absolutely evident that the basic players [in the election] will be [Our Ukraine leader Viktor] Yushchenko and [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych, so we should present a powerful alternative," Vinskyy said. He added that if such a joint candidate lost to both Yushchenko and Yanukovych on 31 October the Socialists and the Communists might support Yushchenko in the second election round. JM

KYIV HOPES FOR COOPERATION WITH ENLARGED EU. In a statement welcoming the EU expansion on 1 May, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry expressed its hope that the 25-member union will not confine itself to domestic issues but will cooperate with its neighbors, Interfax reported. "EU enlargement opens broad opportunities for Ukraine to develop and expand cooperation both with the EU and our neighbors, new EU member countries, which are linked to us by common history, close economic, cultural, and human relationships," the statement reads. JM

The European Union has always remained deliberately vague about where its borders lie. Provided countries fulfill the 1993 Copenhagen criteria -- guaranteeing the rule of law, human rights, and respect for minorities, as well as having a functioning market economy -- technically anyone can join. In the late 1980s, Morocco -- with its eyes on the market just 16 kilometers across the Straits of Gibraltar -- applied to join the union, only to be told it was not European enough.

Following the accession of 10 mostly Central and Eastern European countries on 1 May, one of the big questions is: Where next? If all goes well, Romania and Bulgaria (and possibly Croatia) will join in 2007. In the event that they meet the demands of Copenhagen, the remaining countries of the western Balkans and Turkey are probably next on the list, perhaps sometime in the next decade.

After that, the choices become less palatable. Ukraine is still trying to make the right noises, but its enthusiasm for reforms remains laconic at best. Moldova, Europe's poorest country, has a flimsy civil society and a glacial pace of reform. It is burdened by Transdniester -- a pro-Russian breakaway region that is a lawless paradise for gangsters and arms dealers. Belarus, hamstrung by the erratic populism of autocratic President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and its unreformed Soviet-style economy, is a particularly unattractive prospect.

Farther east, there are the countries of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The latter's "Rose Revolution" in November brought the region back onto policymakers' radar screens, but subsequent tensions over the republic of Adjaria represent a major step backward for Georgia. Armenia's strongman president, Robert Kocharian, has meanwhile moved ruthlessly to quash opposition demands for his resignation. Azerbaijan remains isolated from the European family over shortcomings like the continuing standoff for Nagorno-Karabakh, the government's stubborn refusal to free all political prisoners, and a general lack of respect for democracy and human rights.

John Palmer, the political director of the Brussels-based European Policy Center, thinks that after the countries of the western Balkans get accepted, "we might see the end of classic enlargement."

That could usher in a multispeed Europe -- one that allows for a certain amount of differentiation. European politicians have always balked at the term, for all its connotations of a Europe divided between dunces and high-flyers. More recently it has been seen as French President Jacques Chirac's Plan B -- an opportunity for France and Germany to forge ahead with an inward-looking European agenda after the failure of the European constitution talks late last year.

Yet a multispeed EU might be the only way the union can expand further while maintaining the standards laid out in the acquis communautaire and not overstretching the purse strings of the richest member states. The recurring nightmare for many European politicians is that the inclusion of dubious democracies -- like Moldova or Ukraine -- would seriously discredit the union. The EU would become an ailing franchise, the political equivalent of a fast-food giant letting any old greasy spoon hang its global logo above the door. Even the much-maligned Eurovision song contest would garner more respect on the international stage.

Early signs of the EU's willingness to embrace differentiation can be seen in the Wider Europe program, which is a framework for countries in the western NIS and southern Mediterranean who will soon find themselves sharing a border with the union. Countries in the Wider Europe program have been offered the prospect of full participation in the EU's market and its four fundamental freedoms -- goods, capital, services, and, eventually, people -- provided they adhere to certain core values and show concrete progress in political, economic, and institutional reforms. The ethos of the program is "Integration, Not Membership."

In the future, if the EU abandoned its open-door policy, states on the fringes of the union would not become full members of the union, but there would be some elements of shared sovereignty. Europe might become what has been termed a "union of concentric circles," with an inner core that accepts the acquis communautaire in full, monetary union, the Common Agricultural Policy, and then wider circles of countries accepting decreasing levels of commitment.

Europe a la carte exists already to some degree, most notably with the single currency, and the European Policy Center's Palmer says these types of ad hoc alliances and groupings will become more common. Countries will club together and pursue various shared policy interests.

There are several significant problems with such a differentiated approach. The first, according to Jonathan Lipkin, an analyst for Oxford Analytica writing for EUObserver.com, is "how overlapping coalitions of states could find a way to put in place coherent and effective administrative and enforcement mechanisms."

The second is that prospective partners, or members, might not go for an "accession lite." Anything less than full membership "just doesn't do it for these countries. It's not enough," says Gergana Noutcheva, an enlargement expert at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. And as financier and philanthropist George Soros wrote in a syndicated column for Project Syndicate in March, "The most powerful tool that the EU has for influencing political and economic developments in neighboring countries is the prospect of membership."

Further expansion will also require a good deal of housekeeping. The brouhaha about the draft constitution in December illustrated the shortcomings of the decision-making process within a larger union. Without reform, the situation would only get worse. "The bigger the EU gets, the national veto will become more a source of paralysis," Palmer says. That means the union will have to rely more heavily on qualified majority voting (QMV) in the future.

The likelihood and extent of further expansion (in terms of political will and popular tolerance) will depend largely on how this most recent wave goes. Enlargement fatigue has already set in. The richest EU states are worried about the cost of integration and are currently sparring with the European Commission about capping the budget. Europeans outside the Euro-elite tend to be lukewarm about EU expansion. According to a November Eurobarometer poll, 54 percent of the French public opposed enlargement.

It would only take a few high-level scandals (diseased Slovak chickens or embezzled structural funds earmarked for a children's hospital in Poznan, perhaps) for the mood to swing further against enlargement. Britain's recent backpedaling over migration after a few scaremongering stories in the tabloid press about the imminent arrival of job-stealing, welfare-sapping Eastern Europeans showed the impact that public opinion can have on government policy.

DEPUTY CALLS FOR BOOSTING MILITARY PRESENCE IN CIS. Duma Defense Committee Chairman Viktor Zavarzin (Unified Russia) told Interfax on 3 May that Russia's national-security interests dictate increasing Moscow's military presence in the CIS, especially in Georgia and Moldova. "Our objective interests demand our further military presence in order to maintain stability in those regions," Zavarzin said, adding that this is all the more necessary because of NATO expansion and a NATO agreement on basing forces in Ukraine. RC

Farther east, there are the countries of the South Caucasus: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. The latter's "Rose Revolution" in November brought the region back onto policymakers' radar screens, but subsequent tensions over the breakaway republic of Adjaria represent a major step backward for Georgia. Armenia's strongman president, Robert Kocharian, has meanwhile responded ruthlessly to public demands that he respect the courts and the ballot box. Azerbaijan remains isolated from the European family over shortcomings like the continuing battle for Nagorno-Karabakh, the government's stubborn refusal to release political prisoners, and a general lack of respect for democracy and human rights. The stakes in the CIS are considerably higher, as those former communist countries are part of Russia's "near abroad." With that in mind, it is difficult to imagine these countries joining the EU in anything less than two decades.

That is not necessarily a gloomy prognosis. John Palmer, the political director of the Brussels-based European Policy Center, thinks that after the countries of the western Balkans get accepted, "we might see the end of classic enlargement."

Yet a multispeed EU might be the only way the union can expand further while maintaining the standards laid out in the acquis communautaire and not overstretching the purse strings of the richest member states. The recurring nightmare for many European politicians is that the inclusion of dubious democracies -- like Moldova or Ukraine -- would seriously discredit the union. The EU would become an ailing franchise, the political equivalent of a fast-food giant letting any old greasy spoon hang its global logo above the door. Even the Eurovision song contest would garner more respect on the international stage.

EU EXPANSION BRINGS LITTLE JOY TO CROSS-BORDER TRADERS IN BELARUS, UKRAINE

On 1 May, the 10 new members of the EU will be celebrating their accession to the bloc. But the celebrations are unlikely to extend further east. Cross-border traders and travelers in the former Soviet republics of Belarus and Ukraine are worried the new EU borders will mean stricter controls on their movement and livelihood.

Prague, 28 April 2004 (RFE/RL) -- The 1 May EU enlargement means changes for people living in the new member states. But it also means changes for those living just beyond the new EU borders -- in countries like Belarus and Ukraine.

A number of changes are taking place at the borders -- some gradually, some immediately. And small-scale border trading, the only livelihood for many impoverished residents of Ukraine and Belarus, is likely to be strongly scaled back.

Thousands of Ukrainians and Belarusians travel to the border with imminent EU members Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to sell cigarettes, vodka, and food -- a modest trade that brings them just enough money to support their families.

But with the borders of those countries now regulated by the EU's visa regimes, such cross-border trade has already sharply declined.

A majority of the trade takes place along the Ukrainian Polish border. Oksana Plyak is a pensioner living in the small western Ukrainian village of Bikiv near the Polish border. She tells Reuters that with pensions of only about $20 per month, many people are surviving thanks only to border trade.

Poland's stricter border control has already scared off many traders. Plyak continues to trade, but it's not an easy day's work. She has to walk 7 kilometers and spend three or four hours waiting in line for a visa that allows her to cross into Poland for the day.

Plyak is worried the EU expansion will mean the end of her extra income, even though the payoff is next to nothing. "And from all of this you won't make more than three to four dollars a crossing because you can't carry that many [things to sell]. You can make more money, but I don't know if I can carry any more."

Belarusians living in the border regions with Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania are also afraid they will be affected by the new regulations.

Andrei Fedorov is an independent political analyst in Minsk. He says the regulations being imposed by each of the border countries have slight differences.

"As concerns Poland, as far as I know, a visa will become twice as cheap. From the first of May, a one-time visa will cost 5 euros [$6], but I think it is not even connected with the [Polish] EU accession because the agreement was reached earlier. As concerns Latvia, it will introduce a substantially more expensive visa -- from 10 to 25 euros. However, instead of several types of visas there will be only two types of visas left -- a transit visa and a visa for entering the country," Fedorov says.

Few border traders can afford to pay 25 or even 10 euros for a visa. Even Poland's 5 euro visa will dip heavily into whatever profits a cross-border trader can hope to make in a day's work.

Sergio Carrera is a political analyst with the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels, where he specializes in EU visa policy and free-movement issues. He says the European Commission has repeatedly said the new border regimes should not become a barrier to trade or cultural exchange, and has taken steps to facilitate local border traffic.

"It will grant a specific sort of visa for people living in an area close to the border, within 50 kilometers. And this visa will allow people traveling to Poland -- for instance, for purposes of trade or for purposes of family, with those people who are living very close to the Polish border and have family in Poland -- they will have the possibility by holding this visa to come in and come out of Poland without the necessity of further administrative checks and lengthy procedures," Carrera says.

Carrera also says that cross-border trade and traveling within the new EU countries will inevitably become more complicated for Belarusians and Ukrainians after the new members become full-fledged members of the Schengen agreement in three years.

Carrera says technically, Germany's eastern border will remain the official EU border for that time. Until the new members fully join Schengen, the EU will have two eastern borders rather than one.