A trademark of success
Will Ukraine use the Visegrad countries’ experience on its road to the EU?
In 2014, the Visegrad countries will celebrate the 10th anniversary of their accession to two blocs, one of them, the EU, being an economic and political one, and the second one, the NATO, a political and military one. The member countries see the Visegrad Group as a trademark of success and good-neighborly relations. The Ambassador of Hungary to Ukraine Mihaly Bayer noted this development, in particular, in his speech at the international conference “The Visegrad Group and the European Integration of Ukraine” during the Polish Presidency of the Group, held on June 7 at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine. According to the diplomat, during the Hungarian presidency of the Visegrad group, his country will promote in the region the values the group’s members attained over the post-accession decade. “We will promote the group’s brand in the wider region in general and Zakarpattia in particular,” Bayer said. “Being neighbors, we can help Ukraine to successfully integrate into European structures, improve the state of democracy, and promote the rule of law in the country.”
It should be noted that the conference used publication of the book Transformation Processes in the Visegrad countries and Ukraine: A Comparative Analysis as an occasion to come together. The book, published in English in 2012, was published in Ukrainian translation in 2013 with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty, while the study it covers was conducted with the support of the International Visegrad Forum.
Therefore, the conference’s participants mainly focused on transformational experience of the Visegrad countries, which were able to easily transit from a communist political system and socialist economy to a democratic system and a modern market economy.
“Our countries are important partners and share many common causes, including support for Ukraine’s European integration efforts. We hope to succeed this year in having the association agreement signed by the end of the year,” the Ambassador of Poland to Ukraine Henryk Litwin set the tone for the discussion. He said it was important for Poland to have Ukraine anchored in the European system, providing it with long-term stability.
The Polish ambassador stressed that the Visegrad Group countries were as post-Communist as Ukraine, making Polish experience of transition from communism to modern economy of interest to our country.
According to Litwin, much of this experience can be replicated in Ukraine, too, ranging from support for small and medium businesses to the local government reform. If the Visegrad countries had been able to do it, it stood to reason that Ukraine could benefit from their experience, the ambassador said.
Litwin noted that the choice of European direction for Ukraine’s development would not harm its relations with the Kremlin. According to him, all Visegrad countries see Russia as an important partner, and all of them worked hard to have good and improving relations with this important partner country and a large market while on the road of European integration.
“We have had a really positive experience in our Russian relationship, seeing that before our accession to the EU and NATO, Poland’s exports to Russia amounted to less than one billion dollars, while in 2012, the figure stood at nearly nine billion dollars. All this happened due to the restructuring of the economic structure and support provided by EU membership,” the Polish ambassador said.
According to him, all Visegrad countries were willing to share their experience, gained on the road towards the EU, including what transformations took place in the government bodies and in the economy. “Of course, we will do so, provided Ukraine is interested. We also recognize the differences that existed between our situation at the beginning of the transition period and Ukraine’s, including the fact that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, so its road will be more difficult, it will find it harder to integrate, and we will take this into account when shaping our policy,” Litwin added.
Meanwhile, the director of the Foreign Policy Institute at the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Ukraine Hryhorii Perepelytsia stressed that we needed to pay attention to the comparative analysis showing why Ukraine, in contrast to the Visegrad countries, was unable to follow this path, and what difficulties it encountered along the way.” The experience of the Visegrad Group is a recipe how to make the transformation and how to strategically consolidate European integration,” Perepelytsia said. According to him, the Visegrad Group has a strong democratic trend. “Poland has initiated the Eastern Partnership and then transformed it from the cooperation format to the European involvement format, and the Polish presidency in the Visegrad Group also sought to involve Ukraine into European processes,” he emphasized.
Interestingly, Ukraine understands the importance of the Visegrad Group’s experience, as the director of the Third Territorial Department of the MFA of Ukraine Andrii Melnyk stressed in his presentation, full of the numbers indicating the group’s member countries’ progress. “The history of the Visegrad Group is a success story of European integration. Over its 15-year-long existence, its members Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary joined the EU and NATO. The group’s experience is an incentive for the Balkan countries and our country, too,” the Ukrainian diplomat said.
We can only hope that the Ukrainian government will take advantage of the Visegrad Group’s experience and undertake the necessary transformation of the political system and its own organization as well as economy, to make Ukraine a member of the EU and thus a great European nation not only de facto, but de jure, too.
