During his presentation on a Dutch television show, Foreign Minister Bert Koenders did his utmost to explain the EU Association agreement has no meaning at all. It won’t cost the Dutch taxpayer a penney, it’s beneficial for commerce between EU and Ukraine, it will rid the Ukraine of rabid corruption within society run by oligarchs and it has no meaning whatsoever to help secure the borders of Ukraine or provide military assistence when under threat from its Russian neighbour.
It’s all very good to make another stride to expand the European Union towards archenemy Russia. The very nature of EU foreign policy in recent years is to work hand in glove under the umbrella of NATO to increase military spending and secure the expanded European borders into the satellite states of the former Soviet Union. Bringing the benefits of capitalism for the 1% under the mask of democratization to new states from the Baltic to the Caspian Sea and Near Asia region.
Biden tells Ukraine’s Poroshenko U.S. to give $335 million in security aid | Reuters |
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that the United States was moving forward with an additional $335 million in security assistance, the White House said in a statement.
Biden, who met with Poroshenko on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit, also told the Ukrainian leader that efforts by Kiev to form a reform-oriented government were critical to unlocking international economic assistance, including a third $1 billion U.S. loan guarantee, the statement said.
Defying Russia, Ukraine Signs E.U. Trade Pact | NY Times – June 2014 |
BRUSSELS — Dealing a defiant blow to the Kremlin, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine signed a long-delayed trade pact with Europe that Moscow had bitterly opposed. He then declared he would like his country to one day become a full member of the European Union.
In so doing, Ukraine’s new leader, a billionaire confectionary magnate, has in effect raised a risky bet on the West that has cost his country hundreds of lives and the loss of the Crimean peninsula to Russia and has set off a low-level civil war in its eastern border region.
By signing the trade pact at the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, Mr. Poroshenko revived a deal whose rejection last November by his predecessor, Viktor F. Yanukovych, set off months of pro-European protests in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and pushed the West into its biggest test of wills with Russia since the end of the Cold War.
The unrest toppled Mr. Yanukovych and drove pro-Russian activists in Crimea and the eastern region of Donetsk to demand annexation by Russia.
“This is a really historic date for Ukraine,” Mr. Poroshenko, who won Ukraine’s presidential elections in May to fill a post left vacant when Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February, said at a news conference here.
The completion of the association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine marked a severe setback for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his oft-repeated goal of reasserting Russian influence in the “near abroad,” Moscow’s term for the territories of the former Soviet Union.
“The big loser in all this is Putin,” said Amanda Paul, a researcher at the European Policy Center, a Brussels research group. “He has gone out of his way to create problems internally in Ukraine but only pushed Ukraine further into the arms of the West than it ever would have gone before. It totally backfired for Putin.”
Moldova and Georgia, two other former Soviet lands that Moscow had pressured not to stray too far from its orbit, also signed agreements with the European Union on Friday. In Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, citizens celebrated with a large public concert, which was broadcast on all major domestic television channels.
South Caucasus: Prospects For Regional Stability Pact Recede | RFERL – May 2006 |
EU officials told a Council of Europe hearing in Brussels that the bloc’s European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) would make a separate Stability Pact redundant. Representatives from Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were also lukewarm in their support for the idea.
The EU was expected to be the Stability Pact’s chief sponsor. But now the project — first floated by regional leaders at the 1999 Istanbul Summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — now appears defunct.
Robert Liddell, a senior official with the EU’s executive European Commission, told today’s hearing he does not consider the project an improvement on the EU’s existing policy.
Liddell said the ENP already embodies a statement of the EU’s desire for stability, good governance and economic reforms in the South Caucasus.
Not The Balkans
Speaking on behalf the EU member states, the newly appointed special representative for the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, discouraged parallels between the proposed pact and the successful, EU-backed Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe.
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Semneby also noted that the South Caucasus is a far more unstable region, with its lingering “frozen conflicts” and Russia’s continued influence.Caspian Energy Link
Both Semneby and Liddell indicated the EU also prefers to see the South Caucasus in a wider context. This is partly due to the active interest taken in the region by key countries such as the United States, Russia, Turkey, and Iran. But the EU’s evolving quest for energy security also plays an important role.
Liddell said the EU views the Black Sea region as integrally linked to the Caspian Sea [pdf] and energy reserves in Central Asia.
South East European (SEE) Security Cooperation
The Regional Cooperation Council promotes mutual cooperation and European and Euro-Atlantic integration of South East Europe in order to inspire development in the region to benefit its people.
The Regional Cooperation Council (RCC) is developing, streamlining, facilitating and supporting South East European (SEE) regional mechanisms with low-cost activities and high impact on regional confidence building. These mechanisms are not `structures’ but are mutually accepted by the beneficiary countries’ as specific institutional forums for exchange of information and security experience, knowledge and lessons learned and have value added for the institutions benefits through regional cooperation.
Overall security and political stability have improved in South East Europe (SEE) in the past decade, with seven countries being members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and five participating in the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme. Currently five RCC participants from SEE are members of the European Union (EU), which plays its own role through its security structures and through the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) activities.
The increased number of NATO countries in the region, as well as the closer links with the EU created new responsibilities for the SEE countries and the need for strengthening the regional cooperation.
