Looking east for a broader perspective
Chris Wells takes a revealing rummage through what the world's English-language press is saying about Poland
Since the referendum last June, many valid and relevant questions have been asked, and will no doubt continue to be asked, regarding Poland's preparedness for what lies ahead in May 2004 and beyond. Is Poland ready? Can all the laws be passed in time? How much are prices going to rise? These questions and others fill acres of local newsprint, with more than a little justification. But, by looking at our neighbors, we can get a different angle on Poland's accession to the European Union.
One story reported by a number of newspapers, was that of a new agreement signed this week by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to form their own economic union to help solve their mutual problems. The idea, briefly, is that these four countries will set up a customs union to remove border tariffs and establish a unified tax regime. But, as with so many East European stories, scratch the surface and admire the duplicity and peddled half-truths of which Western leaders can only dream.
The Ukrainian newspaper, Zerkalo Nedeli, carried a damning several-thousand word article taking apart the proposed Central Economic Zone (which at the signing in Yalta was renamed the Single Economic Space (SES)) piece by suspect piece, and highlighting the oceanic gulf between what Ukrainian leaders were saying to their public and what was contained in the document they were signing on that public's behalf.
Ukraine's stated goals are: first to join the WTO and then to move towards integration with the EU. When the SES was first mooted last February, President Kuchma reassured the Ukrainian public that these objectives would not be affected and that the SES was only to be a free-trade zone. As negotiations have proceeded over the last several months, again and again the language of the document has been adjusted until, almost without debate, a full customs union will be created.
The EU has made it clear that it will not deal with a competing customs union. Although countries are free to create free-trade zones with their neighbors, no country can be a member of two separate and distinct customs unions at the same time. The author went on to decry the fact that by latching itself to the lumbering behemoth of the Russian economy, Ukraine was strangling its hopes of moving closer to the West, and quoted expert economic opinions stating that only Russia would gain at the expense of the other three. The only silver-lining was that even though it was signed, the agreement still has to get through the Ukrainian constitutional courts before it can be implemented. The author left her readership in no doubt that the Ukrainian government will certainly have a fight on its hands.
But what does all of this have to do with Poland? Well, next month sees the 13th Economic Forum of the Central European Initiative, to be held in Krynica-Górska and attended by presidents from all of the regional countries, as well as high-ranking representatives from the EU. After much persuasion from the Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw, President Kuchma was to have opened the Forum, and a full day of the three-day event was to have been devoted exclusively to Ukraine. But this is now not going to happen. In light of the SES agreement, Kuchma has refused to go, and the Ukrainian delegation has withdrawn. As the author of the article put it, Kuchma is not coming to Poland because he has nothing to say.
Although Ukraine's problems are its own, its decision to join the SES has put any distant dreams of joining the EU back by many years, if not decades. Russia's clumsy and painfully obvious attempt to create some sort Eurasian EU smacks of the former superpower being not quite ready to relinquish its influence over those satellites that remain in sufficiently close orbits.
Fortunately for Poland, we can plan our celebration parties next May, with what many in Kyiv would consider to be rather less worrying issues.
After all, it could have been worse.
