30.06.2003 00:15
UKRAINE. OPTIMUM PATH TO EUROPE

The existing and eternally varying geopolitical realities require working out correct decisions as to direction of actions and a system of instruments for Ukraine to qualify for full-fledged membership in the European Union, lest Ukraine s development should be stopped at its western borders with an ambiguous status as a neighbor country .

The establishment of the maximum open, efficient and mutually lucrative relationships with Germany one the EU s leading countries would become for Ukraine one of the most significant factors of putting its declared European choice into action. In that connection, the round-table meeting Ukraine and Germany in Europe: Via Cooperation to Integration organized by the Verkhovna Rada Committee for Euro-Atlantic Integration in partnership with the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation and the Ukrainian branch of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation has in effect predetermined a new stage in the development of Ukrainian-German relationships in the context of EU enlargement and our country s Euro-integration aspirations.

The issue of Ukraine s future in the Euro-integration context is ever more persistently put in the forefront among top officials in Brussels in charge of implementing the EU policy and among EU governments. Speaking at the round-table conference, Wilhelm Schtaudaher, the Konrad Adenauer Foundations Secretary General outlined what he believes would foster Ukraine s Euro-integration aspirations.

Minister Councellor at the German Embassy in Kyiv, Hans-Johann Schmidt expressed firm conviction that Western Europe is interested in drawing Ukraine into European structures, specifically in the common economic space. He said he is confident that the European Union would forge its position as to Ukraine s possible membership within the next several months. In saying so he added that the European Union would try and approach each of its neighbors on a country-by-country basis.

A number of serious statements that are worthy of being closely studied were made at the conference by the chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on European Integration Borys Tarasyuk, director of the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. He was the first top-level Ukrainian official to suggest that in the future, three countries France, Germany and Ukraine would make up an arc of security on which European stability and security would rest. He said support from Germany for Ukraine s aspirations for membership in the European Union, WTO and NATO is priceless. But, sadly, this support needs to be synchronized, at least in the upper echelons of the German political establishment.

(The article is given here in a distilled version)