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 for this to happen, Ukraine still needs many years of reforms. The negotiation process that begins now must adapt the country to 28,000 community standards, as well as a tough dispute—which has already begun—over its status as an agricultural power. And, above all, it must first find the fit of a future member in permanent conflict with Russia, probably with part of its territory occupied by the Kremlin's weapons.
The announcement this Thursday that Brussels is officially opening negotiations with Ukraine to join the EU has been received with joy in kyiv. “It is a victory for Ukraine, a victory for all of Europe, a victory that motivates, inspires and strengthens,” said the president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Your country had been knocking at the doors of the European brotherhood since 1993, but it was not until now, when Russia unleashed the invasion in 2022 to disintegrate its State, that the EU has assumed that the stability of the continent depends on Ukrainian integration into the umbrella of its democracy and well-being.
Ukraine is in need of good news. The war is expected to be long, with no signs of being able to recover territory occupied by Russian troops until at least 2025, according to the main analysts of the conflict. From the Government, both its Prime Minister, Denis Shmihal, and the Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs, Olga Stefanishina, have assured that their country can be a member of the EU in two years. “We have to communicate to citizens a realistic image and not dreams,” Victoria Melnik, director of the European integration program at the Center for Political and Legal Reform of Ukraine, said of these statements in a conference last October. “The negotiations will last for years. It must be taken into account to avoid frustrations. “It certainly won't be a couple of years,” added Jennes de Mol, Netherlands ambassador in kyiv.
The Ukrainian Government has expressly reformed a multitude of laws in the last two years so that the European Council could make this Thursday's decision. Stefanishina has detailed on her social networks that the Ukrainian legal body has already introduced 1,625 community standards. Ivan Nagorniak, deputy director of the Government Office for European Integration, specified in October that these 1,600 standards were required from the outset to be able to open negotiations, but 28,000 still remain to be integrated. And as De Mol stressed, it is not just a matter of the Ukrainian regulatory code approving them, “it will be necessary to see how they are applied, and that requires time.”
The European Commission and most EU governments have been benevolent towards Ukraine. Important demands that were raised to start the negotiations have been half met. Two examples: last week, Zelensky signed the reform of four laws, modifications that were demanded from Brussels. Three of them are linked to the reinforcement of anti-corruption agencies. Both the opposition and civil rights organizations have denounced that the reform continues to maintain amendments to the criminal code that make it difficult for a judge to investigate cases of corruption in public offices.
Another law reformed by Zelensky was the one that protects the rights of national minorities in Ukraine. The president assured that the modifications to the law follow the recommendations of the Venice Commission. This requires that the Russian language be protected in Ukraine, as established by the Constitution, but the reformed minority law does exactly the opposite, permanently marginalizing it from the public, school and media spheres.
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The possible integration of Ukraine into the EU will require profound changes in multiple areas in a country that, if it has any ideology, as Zelensky has defended, it is libertarianism, the prioritization of individual freedom over minimal state intervention. At conferences in October on Ukraine's integration into the EU, Oleksander Saienko, former Minister of Reforms during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019), insisted that it will be necessary to transform the Ukrainian mentality that state intervention is negative: “Now it is a priority to create a competent and less corrupt body of officials. Being effective in this is key to accessing the EU.” If there is one thing that Ukrainians fear in their desire to be part of the EU, according to the multiple interviews of this newspaper in the last year with citizens, it is the bureaucracy, the rules that must be adopted on a day-to-day basis, be it in the fiscal field. , work or in commercial production.
Probably, one of the great battles that Ukraine will have to fight to become part of the EU will be the defense of its agricultural sector against the interests of other large producers. Despite waging a war against Russia in which its existence is at stake, its neighbors Slovakia, Poland and Hungary have vetoed the import of certain Ukrainian products, especially cereals, alleging that they constitute unfair competition. The same has happened with the transportation sector. Unions from these countries denounce that the working conditions of Ukrainian transporters, from salaries to rest hours, 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 is just the appetizer of what is to come.
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