EU – Page 3 – viewpoint-east.org

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It is possibly that somebody have noticed that the a current focus at viewpoint-east.org in Ukraine. Actually December and January, and possibly also parts of February, will have focus Ukraine. I dont want the articles to focus only on politics or/and economics, so if you have any ideas, essays, articles etc about Ukraine, that you would like to share, please send me a note or just comment on this entry.

After I wrote the short comment on the Ukraine-EU summit yesterday, I discovered that this issue actually is able to be more debated than I thought. Checking around the web I see that very few have mentioned it at all. The one that have discussed it seems to have been less critical than, at least I, desired. And after a conversations over lunch yesterday with a Swedish project leader working with Georgia, I felt I need to come back a more to this issue.

Just to clarify, I have never had any high thoughts about EUs “commitment” in Ukraine or any other country east of Berlin, actually. But I think possibly EU should learn from some mistakes before and especially by US. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, USA seemed to lack ambition with their eastward connections. As Gross & Steinheer claims in “Economic transition in Central and Eastern Europe: Planting Seeds” (2004) USA had no clear view on how to approach economical changes in Eastern and Central Europe (I hate that concept, but please give me an acceptable idea of what to use instead and I will use that!) which implied that Europe, or consequently EU, won the economic battle. Of course, this is something that could be disputed – against and for Gross & Steinherr conclusion. But we could possibly agree on that EU have an influence over Eastern and Central Europe. Regardless or not of the American influence, because it is perhaps not possible to evaluate how “little” the American influence is in that comparison.

But honestly, this is not what I had in mind to discuss, I just wanted to establish once more that EU actually have an influence, and that the crucial point is not how big the influence are but rather what is the main idea with it.

As I told my “colleague” at lunch yesterday, I am not sure EU know what to do with their Eastern connection and Ukraine. They don’t have an agenda and consequently have to jump from one tree to an other in order to try to avoid and maneuver nervous, pleading questions from Ukrainian leaders. My opposition is that an unaware influence actually can be much more damaging than having an aggressive attitude or even xenophobic and warmongering one. Xenophobic attitudes is easily raised, everywhere, evidently also in Ukraine, as Olya Vesnjanka wrote today at Deutsche Welle.

Conclusions? Well, I am not certain EU ever had any clear ideas about Eastern and Central Europe. I just think they “won” the battle economically once, due to the fact that that USA was even more hesitating and doubtful than EU. But one can call me illusionist ; ) from one perspective, and that is from the point of view that I wish EU to evaluate what the connection and commitment with eastern Europe actually is about! And answer the questions, even if the answers gets nasty and unpleasant (as in “We don’t care about the countries, but we want to suck them dry and have what reamins of their small resources”). And it is possible that this could imply that future cooperation dies. But as I said above, the todays unaware and near-sighted commitment could in the long run be pretty harmful!

(Läsningstid: 2 minuter)

I have to admit I was really surprised when I opened my weekly issue of one of the leading newspapers in Sweden this saturday and found a small note about the Ukraine-EU summit. I was not as surprised by the actual agreement. Of course there where no real change in order to improve the relationship between the Ukraine “the EU’s closest cooperation and trade partner”, as the Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said, and EU. I think, that even though I am a sceptic, pessimist a real misanthrope in these circumstances, I am probably not alone when say that one of the priority issues during the Swedish Presidency, The Eastern Partnership, is perhaps a real fiasco. It has actually been so little talk about this priority, so I started to imagine that they perhaps had moved it out from the priority list… Anyway, I wonder, really wonder, what the chairman of EU, Mr. Reinfeldt, and Chairman of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, hopes to achieve when their main focus is to pressure and lecture Ukraine, pointing on that Ukraine’s reforms are too slow or not democratic enough? The only achievement I can see is that they follow wishes from IMF like little doggies? • woof woof •

I am especially worried, because it seems like EU has run out of any creative ideas about how to cooperate with, for instance, Ukraine. And it is possible that this inanity actually affect the relationships in a many negative ways. I can’t say I have any constructive ideas right now on the issue, but I at least do know that even though the EU leaders congrats themselves, the whole agreement is painfully worthless.

Or? Any objections?

viewpoint-east.org

Focus Ukraine

Surprised by the Ukraine-EU summit