Why the Ukraine should not be allowed to join the European Union in the Short Run

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: B (= 2,0), Vesalius College Brussels, course: Politics of European Integration, language: English, abstract: With the election of Viktor Juschtschenko as President of Ukraine in December 2004 a new issue has been opened in the integration process of the European Union: Shall the Ukraine become a member in the near future? While Juschtschenko demands this since his inauguration in January 2005 the EU still reacts very reserved according to that issue. It did not make a final decision yet how to deal with Ukraine in the future. This research paper is going to show why it is important to give Ukraine enough incentives to go on in renewing its economy and to establish a stable democracy in the former country of the Soviet Union, but why it is much too early to allow the Ukraine to join the EU in the short run (main thesis). It will analyze how the European Union dealt with Ukraine so far and give a recommendation how to go on in the future. Therefore it is looking in the first chapter at the relations with Ukraine until Juschtschenko was elected as President - because this marks a turning point in Ukrainian politics towards the EU. The second chapter will concentrate on only the last four months and evaluate both the policy of Ukraine towards the EU and the policy of the EU according to the issue of a possible accession of Ukraine. The third and last chapter will start a discussion why or why not the EU should open accession negotiations with Ukraine. It is going to work out the main thesis presented above. To reconstruct the policy and proof the different facts the author of the research paper used a lot of original documents of the EU as well as articles published in the media. Because this research paper examines a not very well researched topic in EU policies, only a few secondary sources were used.