Subregional Cooperation with the EU, or How can Ukraine not miss the integration boat?

The large window of opportunity that opened with the Polish Presidency of the European Union will soon begin to swing shut. If the long-awaited signing of the Association Agreement does not take place within the next six months, Ukraine will find itself having to seriously rethink its prospects and begin to look for new partners. The question is, what’s better: to hold your breath and wait for the desired result or to start looking for new friends right now?

At a time when the EU is hoping to form a circle of friendly, stable countries around itself, Ukraine must also form a circle of friends within the EU. To expect all the Union’s members to have the same attitude towards it or to count on the complete dedication of a single mentor country makes little sense. And although the formula of an alternative path to European integration through subregional sectoral cooperation is hardly ideal, it could actually offer the principles that are capable of establishing friendly and mutually beneficial relations with all members of the EU.

“FRIENDS 4EVER”?

On its path to Europe, Ukraine has always tried to find those who would reliably defend its interests among EU member countries. The idea that a few strong political allies could lobby the country’s Eurointegration ambitions from within, pulling Ukraine like some two truck into European space became a virtual axiom in Ukrainian diplomacy. The “forum of friends of Ukraine” that took place in Luxembourg in May was a clear confirmation of this. Organized by the country’s traditional political “pals”—the foreign ministries of Poland and Sweden—, the forum enjoyed a friendly atmosphere with very optimistic findings and an extremely wide range of topics, from a visa-free regime to military cooperation. Enormous hopes were placed on influential friends—the traditional approach of Ukraine’s foreign policy and one that is not entirely baseless.

Indeed, it seems particularly appropriate just now, during Poland’s presidency, which coincides with the final stages of talks between Ukraine and the EU on an Association Agreement. But are these expectations not just a bit unrealistic?

Efforts by Ukraine to form a circle of friends, a kind of “inside Europe party of supporters,” have generally been bilateral and depended significantly on understandings between individual politicians at the highest level. The stability of such a circle of friends becomes hostage to the political situation at any given moment and to swings in the electoral mood in each of the mentor countries. As the ruling coalitions in these countries change, it is always possible that friends will gradually be replaced by indifferent politicians with no qualms about leaving Ukraine in a grey zone.

In addition, after the last wave of expansion, the European Union came close to the limits of its ability to absorb new countries. Fatigue from the expansion process itself has set in and is still felt very sharply in the EU, forcing the Union to adjust its policy towards the group of friendly countries that are on its outskirts and are hoping to be able to join. This group, in turn, contains two different types of countries: countries in the Balkan peninsula that are already engaged in the Stabilization and Association Process, which involves very specific measures intended to accelerate accession to the EU; and countries in the European Neighborhood Policy, whose “Europeanness” is not under question, but who are not being offered any real integrational prospects. Ukraine belongs to the second group. Although such a situation cannot but raise feelings of disenchantment in the country that finds itself left on shore while the integration boat moves away, it is also not worth indulging in fatalistic thoughts about how the walls of “Fortress Europe” are becoming completely impenetrable for new aspirants.

SECTORAL COOPERATION: ONE FOOT INSIDE THE EU?

In the post-expansion era, participation in subregional, sector-based organizations could provide a viable alternative to “full-scale” Eurointegration in those cases where the latter is—at least temporarily—impossible. This means that Ukraine’s cooperation with its European friends should be very clearly outlined, having a regional tie, being sectoral in orientation and, where possible, having contractual basis. Ukraine already has experience joining a partner organizations on this basis, such as the subregional European Energy Community (EEC), of which the country became a full-fledged member half a year ago. It is not unreasonable to expect that, should Ukraine build proper multilateral relations with EEC members, this organization will allow the integration dynamic to keep moving forward in EU-Ukraine relations even as the process of expansion begins to come to an end.

Membership in the Energy Community offers Ukraine an opportunity to bring its policies the closest possible to those of the EU, even if these only relate to the power sector. This kind of narrowly specialized approach places Ukraine’s power sector in the forefront of integration, making it a kind of test lab for European approaches to policy-making and for adapting EU rules and procedures.

The Energy Community is often seen as a preliminary stage to EU accession—a pre-accession instrument. But it does not actually anticipate full policy unification between EEC member countries and the European Union, as this would require setting up a comprehensive common legislative environment in an individual sector, that would then be governed by all EU legislation, including new laws.

Instead, the Energy Community only extends to its members a series of “tried and true” EU Directives in the power sector, competition rules and the environment. So, to say that EEC membership is de facto membership in the European Union’s energy sector would be inaccurate. It is more like a platform for cooperation that includes the European Union’s closest friends—both potential candidates for accession like the Balkans, and countries that have no such prospects for the immediate future, like Ukraine and Moldova. For the first group, participating in the EEC is a mandatory condition of accession; for the second one, it means access to EU markets and to a source of best practices, and—what’s more important—a chance to establish deep sectoral ties with future EU members. For Ukraine, this offers a real chance to gain new allies in the European community even before these countries become EU members.

MORE FRIENDS=MORE PROSPECTS

The key to this will be the approach Ukraine uses to build these sectoral ties. It is common practice in the EU to use bilateral agreements that cover an entire given sector. This bilateral approach is decisive for relations with between the EU and countries like Switzerland and Russia.

But when it comes to the EU’s “circle of friends” and “stable neighbors” security strategy, other, multilateral, approaches are a higher priority, with a large number of actors and the synergy of a large number of countries’ policies. Organizations like the EEC and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) are organized precisely on such a multilateral basis. Moreover, the Energy Community has an even stronger regional aspect: set up originally as an instrument for coordinating energy policy on the Balkan peninsula, it expanded to an even larger part of the Balkan-Black Sea subregion after Ukraine and Moldova joined. This regional form of multilateralism involves looking for regional solutions to regional problems, including by organizing transborder cooperation in trade, power infrastructure, environmental protection, and other areas.

Despite the fact that the very structure of the EEC encourages the building of multilateral ties, relations between Ukraine and the Community evolved in the bilateral fashion typical for this country—with the European Commission acting as the main partner. This body really did coordinate power integration in the Balkans from the very first days of the Athens Process, which predated the establishment of the Energy Community. However, it no longer has any monopoly on representing the interests of all the member countries.

And it is with representatives of these countries that the most active sectoral cooperation needs to be established. Ukraine needs to primarily orient itself on the Western Balkans, which are in the first queue to join the EU: Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia. If they join the Union with well-established infrastructural and trade ties with Ukraine, this will realistically draw Ukraine closer to the EU. It would be hard to find a better way to guarantee Ukraine allies in the EU already now. Putting together a common position on key issues with the Republic of Moldova would also make a lot of sense for Ukraine, given that the integration of these two countries in the Energy Community was synchronized.

Larion Lozoviy is a researcher with the International Centre for Policy Studies’s EU 4SEAS project, funded with the support of the European Commission.

Originally published in the Den newspaper, ¹192, 25 October2011