Ukraine disappointed with EU ‘hypocrisy’

Ukraine is generally satisfied with the outcome of an EU-Ukraine summit that took place in Paris last month, but is disappointed the final political declaration failed to underline the country’s European identity, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Kostyantyn Yeliseyev, said on Wednesday (22 October).

“In an open spirit, I would like to tell you my disappointment with the fact that the EU rejected the idea to recognise Ukraine as a state with a European identity,” Mr Yeliseyev told a group of journalists in Brussels.

“It’s a funny thing, when they negotiated this document, I suggested ‘OK, if you don’t want that, put in the political statement the sentence that you recognise Ukraine as a European state with an African identity.’ They said of course not. ‘Ok, let’s put with Asian identity.’ [Again] No,” the deputy foreign minister recounted, saying nobody could give him a proper answer on why the reference to “European identity” was not acceptable.

“This is just to show you sometimes the hypocrisy also of the EU,” Mr Yeliseyev said.

The Ukrainian diplomat underlined some positive achievements of the high-level meeting in September, such as concluding an association agreement with the EU “based on the principle of political association and economic integration,” or the launch of a dialogue on a visa-free regime.

Additionally, some “very important political features” were agreed in September, “for instance for the first time the EU recognised that Ukraine is a European country and that we [EU and Ukraine] share a common history and common values,” Mr Yeliseyev said.

But he deplored that “even today there is a group of sceptics within the EU who are trying to some extent to block further progress in EU-Ukraine relations,” naming the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.

‘Business as usual’

Following comments from European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso last week that the EU is concerned with the recent political crisis in Ukraine, Mr Yeliseyev said the situation should not be “over-dramatised.”

“I don’t see any problems, any interconnection between the negotiations [with the EU] and the current internal developments in Ukraine,” he said.

Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko earlier this month dissolved parliament and announced early elections would take place in December, in an ongoing power struggle with Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The vote would be the third time in three years that parliamentary elections are held in Ukraine.

“Sometimes people are trying to over-dramatise the situation [in Ukraine],” Mr Yeliseyev said. “There are political disputes between major political forces in Ukraine [but] to my mind this is very common to any EU member state … It is a common practice for democracy.”

“We are trying to do business as usual [and] the administrative machine in Ukraine is working properly.”

The eternal visa issue

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister also raised the question of visa requirements for citizens from his country - a very sensitive issue for Ukrainians.

The EU made much of a visa facilitation agreement with Ukraine that came into force at the beginning of this year that was supposed to make receiving short-stay and multiple entry visas easier for Ukrainian citizens.

But Ukrainians say it has not made any real difference.

“Unfortunately on the ground there is no fully fledged implementation [of this agreement] … There are [still] a lot of problems, a lot of negative examples how the EU side is discriminating Ukrainian citizens in this field,” Mr Yeliseyev said.

Some EU states - including Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium - are “very unfriendly when it comes to visa policy towards Ukraine,” the minister pointed out.

As a result, “during the first half of this year the quantity of Ukrainians travelling to EU member states decreased 2.5 times. This is unacceptable, totally unacceptable,” he added, with Kiev to launch a dialogue on a future visas free regime on 29 October.

Source of information: EUObserver.com
http://euobserver.com/9/26978/?rk=1