EU warns Ukraine on upcoming elections
15.09.2007 - 09:07 CET | By Philippa Runner
EU leaders have warned Ukraine it cannot expect deeper integration unless it tidies up its political mess in upcoming elections, with visa wrangles also complicating the pair's summit in Kiev on Friday (14 September).
"Free and fair early parliamentary elections...and the formation of an effective and stable government would be the best evidence of the country's ability to accomplish this goal [closer EU ties]," a joint post-summit statement said.
EU top diplomat Javier Solana even suggested Ukraine should count itself lucky the event took place at all, given recent turmoil. "The fact that we are here...is real proof of our relationship, our trust in the development of your country," he said, AP reports.
"It is important to achieve stability for the Ukrainian government to concentrate its energy on reforms," European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso added.
Ukrainians go to the polls in two weeks' time on 30 September to choose between two sides represented by Orange Revolution figurehead, president Viktor Yushchenko, and his more Russia-friendly rival, prime minister Viktor Yanukovych.
Infighting between the two camps almost ended in violence on Kiev streets in May. It has also thrown the country's constitutional structure into question and put on hold economic and administrative reform.
The pro-Yushchenko groups are expected to take just over 30 percent of votes, while Mr Yanukovych's party hit 27 percent in recent polls. The OSCE is calling in almost 700 monitors to help the vote go smoothly.
The country of 47 million people on the EU's eastern border threw off its authoritarian, post-Soviet regime in late 2004 and asked to join the Brussels club. But it has not created a stable government since the revolution took place and is currently negotiating a more modest EU "enhanced agreement" instead.
"Our European and democratic choice is obvious and unbreakable," president Yushchenko said on Friday.
"Anchoring our political future to a united Europe is our top strategic priority," senior Yushchenko aide Oleksandr Chalyy wrote in UK daily The Guardian the same day. "The key point of such policy must be to meet the Copenhagen criteria [EU entry rules] - unilaterally, if necessary - within a 10-year timescale."
Visa gripes
Kiev also aired gripes of its own at the top-level meeting however, complaining that ordinary Ukrainians have found it harder and harder to get EU visas over the past year.
Some EU consulates in Kiev have been accused of humiliating and overcharging applicants in recent months, in one example forcing an EU-bound children's choir to sing on the pavement to prove its credentials.
The Portuguese EU presidency promised to broker bilateral talks with problematic EU states, with Germany and Italy singled out as the worst offenders by Ukraine tourist agencies.
"The main issue is the unfairly high, from our point of view, rate of refusal in issuing EU visas to Ukraine citizens and the complex system of issuing them," prime minister Yanukovych said on Friday, PAP reports.
"Ukraine requested EU member states to further improve the processing of visa applications of Ukrainian citizens," the post-summit joint statement added, in what president Yushchenko called a "sensitive problem."
EU warns Ukraine on upcoming elections
Author