Business (Self-)Empowerment in EU Geoeconomic Accession: Pathways to EU Markets in Ukraine’s Telecom and Electricity Sectors

Regulatory integration into EU markets is conventionally perceived as a top-down process driven by EU leverage. Once regulatory approximation is agreed upon at the EU supranational and intergovernmental levels, policy changes and the convergence of economic activities are expected to occur at the micro level. However, this conventional sequence does not adequately explain the synchronization of Ukraine's electricity grid with the European network, nor the extension of the EU digital market regime to Ukraine through a voluntary roaming-free agreement between the EU and Ukrainian telecoms - both of which occurred prior to the formal alignment of Ukraine’s electricity and telecommunications sectors with the European acquis communautaire. This paper argues that these cases reflect a geoeconomic logic of integration, where strategic economic interdependence is shaped not only by institutional leverage but also by bottom-up pressures from domestic actors responding to geopolitical shifts. Using process tracing and expert interviews, the paper conducts two within-sector empirical analyses to uncover the causal mechanisms behind bottom-up regulatory integration. It highlights the pivotal role of business coalitions in driving compliance with EU rules, demonstrating how economic actors can act as agents of geopolitical alignment. These findings offer critical insights into Ukraine’s evolving position within the EU’s geoeconomic sphere - knowledge that is especially relevant in an era where economic connectivity increasingly serves as a tool of geopolitical strategy in the EU.