Brussels, 30/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk arrived in Brussels on Thursday 30 January to promote the idea that the EU should rapidly adopt a new, strong common position in favour of the European aspirations expressed by part of the Ukrainian public. Tusk is to go to Paris, Berlin and London in coming days. At the same time, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have expressed concern about the fact that the EU is not ready to help should events in Ukraine worsen in coming months, becoming out-and-out civil war.
The caution expressed by the first president of the independent Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, who said his “country is on the brink of civil war” (see EUROPE 11007) has been taken very seriously in several capitals of the EU. However, according to a source close to Tusk, the EU and the European institutions are only now beginning to realise that “radical development of the situation towards violence on a far greater scale” is not just a phantasmagorical scenario. Information that has become available on the “worsening of the state of physical and mental health” of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich makes this concern still greater, the same source said.
For some member states - especially those bordering on Ukraine - the stakes may be colossal. From 300,000 to 400,000 Ukrainians live in Poland, for example. If civil war were to break out in Ukraine, those Ukrainians would probably seek to help their families by bringing them to Poland, and the number of wounded seeking refuge would increase. The question of refugees was not raised at the meeting between Tusk and European Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso during a working lunch on Thursday 30 January.
Another consequence of the deteriorating situation in Ukraine was evoked, however - that of energy and Russian gas supplies for the EU, 70-80% of which transit through Ukraine. The “EU is not willing to assist the eastern member states as there is no automatic procedure” which would avoid the need to organise intergovernmental meetings in Brussels to face up to the different kinds of problem, the Polish source said. By failing to take all the possible eventualities into consideration, the EU has already made the mistake of allowing itself to be taken by surprise by Ukraine's refusal to sign the association agreement. The direct consequences, however, were essentially political and not economic or humanitarian.
One can but speculate about how the events in Ukraine will develop but, according to the source close to Tusk, the critical period - if no compromise is rapidly found between the power in place and the opposition - will be in the weeks following the end of the Sochi Olympic Games that are due to conclude late February. The Russian Federation could wish to be directly involved in the Ukrainian crisis, taking advantage of the end of the caretaker government of Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhiy Arbouzov and the resumption of talks on the gas contract between Russia and Ukraine.
Within the EU, positions diverge over what attitude should be adopted, but two major tendencies are becoming clear. Either the EU should remain passive, or it should adopt a common position with new incentives, at the risk of being accused once more of interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs. Warsaw is seeking to bring the other member states to this second option. The idea is to clearly state that there are prospects of Ukraine becoming a member of the EU, which could prove a highly tricky thing to accomplish. Warsaw also wants financial support under various European instruments to be hiked up and for a visa-free regime to be proposed to Ukraine. Finally, it wants at all cost to avoid the fate of Ukraine being addressed at the EU-Russia bilateral relations level.
Prime Minister Tusk met the commissioner for enlargement and European neighbourhood policy, Stefan Füle, in Brussels, as well as European Parliament President Martin Schulz and then Barroso. The latter appears to be in favour of at least some of the Polish proposals. He thus said, during a press conference with Tusk, that the “European Union is determined to keep its full political involvement in the settlement of the crisis in Ukraine” and that “we are ready to look at all the possibilities with the relevant instruments from the neighbourhood instruments to cooperation with the EIB, to technical assistance and also to implementing our offer already made of macro-financial assistance”. According to the same Polish source, Tusk could obtain support for his ideas from Paris and also perhaps Berlin, while London is said to be sticking to “positive neutrality”. (JK/transl.jl)