Abstract
Ukraine’s history and geopolitical position seem to define its destiny of a state that needs to maintain a difficult balancing act between Russia and the West. Yet, after the Orange revolution in 2004, the possibility of European Union membership for Ukraine has emerged. While in the past Ukraine’s European choice has been more of a declared, symbolic wish of the Ukrainian authorities counterweighted by the hard reality of the country’s close proximity and ties with Moscow, the new impetus for democratic reforms provided by the election of President Viktor Yushchenko could potentially change the precarious balance of Ukraine’s foreign relations and economic orientation. Since his election in December 2004, President Yushchenko has made numerous moves towards a rapid start of negotiations with the EU. Leaving aside how realistic such a scenario is given the EU’s new cautious stance on enlargement, we anticipate that any progress towards starting enlargement negotiations would put Ukraine into a different regime, that of adopting the rules of a closely-knit multilevel system of governance, such as the EU. This change to a different type of governance has serious potential to create incompatibilities with existing regimes with Russia at the centre, in which Ukraine participates. Indeed, perceptions of incompatibility between a pro-Russian and pro-Western orientation of Ukraine in general, and its membership (or other form of enhanced cooperation) in the EU as well as in the Commonwealth of Independent States (hereinafter, ‘the CIS’), in particular, have already been revealed by policy makers both in the East and in the West.
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Notes
S.D. Krasner, ‘Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables’, International Organization, 36 (2) (1982): 185.
We use the terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, ‘legal’ and ‘political’ as interpreted in the literature on legalization of international relations, see K. Abbott et al., ‘The Concept of Legalization’, International Organization, 3 (2000): 401–19.
D. Schoen and M. Rein, Frame Reflection (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
Indeed, it has been argued that the CIS emerged because it was the only post-USSR framework within which Ukraine (having rejected the draft Union Treaty) was prepared to participate. Russia, in particular, which was otherwise prepared to sign the Union Treaty, was reluctant to create a post-USSR formation without Ukraine. For more, see F. Feldbrugge, ‘The CIS: Legal and Political Re-Integration of Eastern Europe’, in W.J.M van Genugten et al. (eds); Realism and Moralism in International Relations (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1999;
R. Solchanyk, ‘Ukraine: A Year of Transition’, in V. Tolz and I. Elliot (eds), The Demise of the USSR (London: Macmillan, 1995)
E. Walker, Dissolution (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
For more, see K. Malfliet, ‘The Commonwealth of Independent States: Towards Supranationalism?’, in F. Feldbrugge (ed.), Law in Transition (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 2002); R. Dragneva, ‘Is “Soft” Beautiful? Another Perspective on Law, Institutions, and Integration in the CIS’, RCEEL, 3 (2004): 279–324.
Art. 7 of the Minsk Agreement of 8 December 1991, Agreement on the Coordinating Institutions of the CIS of 21 December 1991. Indeed, on account of this as well as other aspects of the CIS initially, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to the legal nature of the new formation (a regional international organization, a confederation or an amorphous organization), see V. Pustogartov, ‘Mezhdunarodno-pravovoi Status SNG’, Gosudarstvo I Pravo, 2 (1993): 27–36;
V. Fisenko and I. Fisenko, ‘Khartiia sotrudnichestva v ramkakh SNG’, Moskovskii zhurnal mezhdunarodnogo prava, 3 (1993): 36–62.
Arts 10, 17 and 18 of the Charter. For more on the relations between these provisions and the mandate of the Economic Court, see M. Kleandrov, ‘Economicheskii Sud SNG: Chto eto takoe?’, Khoziaistvo i pravo, 7 (1993): 60–9.
The PCA also incorporates a Declaration concerning Art. 102, which clarifies ‘special urgency’ as meaning cases of ‘material breach’ (that is, ‘violation of a provision essential to the accomplishment of the object or the purpose of the treaty’) under the 1969 Vienna Convention. For more, see P. Eekhout, External Relations of the EU. Legal and Constitutional Foundations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); C. Hillion, op.cit., note 32.
A. Dimitrova (ed.), Driven to Change: Enlargement Viewed From the East (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
S. White, I. McAllister and M. Light, ‘Enlargement and the New Outsiders’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 1 (2002): 135–53.
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© 2007 Rilka Dragneva and Antoaneta Dimitrova
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Dragneva, R., Dimitrova, A. (2007). Patterns of Integration and Regime Compatibility: Ukraine Between the CIS and the EU. In: Malfliet, K., Verpoest, L., Vinokurov, E. (eds) The CIS, the EU and Russia. Studies in Central and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230210998_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230210998_9
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