EU-Ukraine Relationship: how a Simulated Partnership leads to a Simulated Democracy

Ukraine used to be “the best pupil” in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) class and was supposed to become the EU’s success story. Nevertheless, it has become one of the troublemakers, challenging the EU with regress in democracy and conviction of Yulia Tymoshenko, the rival of the new Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych. So what went wrong? This paper focuses on three questions: 1. To what extent and in which areas have the EU’s policies towards Ukraine been interest- or value-based, and are they convergent or divergent in results? 2. How does Ukraine respond to the EU’s policies, and which factors explain their recent failures? First, we will scrutinize the ENP and EaP instruments and the EU’s modes of engagement with Ukraine and will try to identify whether they reflect the EU’s self-interest or values. Special attention will be paid to the post-Lisbon Treaty developments. Second, we will analyse how Ukraine has been implementing EU’s programs, especially during Yanukovych’s controversial presidency. Third, we will try to explain the results of EU’s policy and the factors behind them. We assume that it is possible to identify double standards in EU’s policy to Ukraine, that is tension and trade-off between self-interest and norms. The EU’s policy turns out to be hypocritical: While the EU is proclaiming “partnership”/“network” approach, in practice, its policy has been more of a “hierarchy” (Lavenex and Schimmelfennig 2010). The EU proclaims that it respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, but in practice it turns it into an object of its conditionality. The EU wants to include Ukraine, by excluding it, that is postponing its membership prospect indefinitely. As a consequence, the EU’s simulated partnership leads to a “simulated democracy” in Ukraine (Lengyel and Ilonszki 2010). Contrary to its declared goals, the EU’s policy contributes to Ukraine’s destabilization and the growth of conflict potential.