Ukraine’s future ‘lies with Europe’
Van Rompuy says that “no one can prevent” Ukraine’s move towards closer relations with Europe.
Ukraine is a member of the “European family” and its future lies with Europe, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said at the end of a two-day summit of European Union leaders in which Ukraine featured prominently.
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Van Rompuy said the EU remained willing to sign political and trade deals with Ukraine “as soon as the country is ready”, despite last month’s decision by the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, to turn his back on the deals.
Van Rompuy’s promise was echoed by the presidents of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and Lithuania, which had hoped that deals with Ukraine would cap its six months as the country presiding over EU member states’ meetings.
Van Rompuy sent out a clear message that Russia’s efforts to prevent a closer association between Ukraine and the EU, including months of economic pressure, would not in the long term halt Ukraine’s move towards Europe. Yanukovych and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, struck several agreements on Tuesday (17 December).
“To my mind, the future of Ukraine lies with Europe,” he said. “One can try to slow it down, to block it, but in the end no one can prevent it.”
He implicitly contrasted this long-term view with Russia’s approach, and, at the same time, countered questions about whether the EU should still be offering the deals to Ukraine.
“We respect and regret the decision of Ukraine’s government of late November not to sign. But the future of our relations is for the long term,” he said. “We can’t let that be compromised by short-term calculations, by outside pressure. It must be a free choice.”
His comments were echoed by Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė. “This is a decision for Ukraine itself,” she said. “No force will be used. We are not going to lure Ukraine into the EU.”
Grybauskaitė said that the Vilnius summit, at which Ukraine could have signed the agreements, had been a valuable experience for the EU. “After Vilnius, we have more clarity and we really have less illusions, more reality about our relations and the future of this region.”
In private, officials and diplomats say that Vilnius has made national leaders highly wary of Yanukovych and that, while they would sign the agreements during his presidency if he met EU requirements, the process of ratifying the agreements in national parliaments would almost certainly be slow, in order to maintain leverage over him.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have flooded the streets of Kiev for the past month, in demonstrations triggered by Yanukovych’s decision not to complete the agreements and, later, by violence meted out against protestors by the riot police.
“This thirst for freedom will not disappear,” Van Rompuy said. “And – perhaps most strikingly for us – this aspiration is expressed by men and women, young and old, waving flags – waving the European flag and its stars of hope… without a hint of cynicism. I cannot resist to say: that should make us reflect in our countries.”