MOSCOW, December 15 (Sputnik) — In an op-ed in Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Monday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev stated that the European Union does not treat Ukraine as an equal partner, subjecting them to a great number of political and economic demands with few concrete benefits in return.
“The association agreement with the EU does not contain any obligations, nor even any mention about the prospects of Ukraine’s membership in the organization,” the Prime Minister noted.
“Similarly, there is no discussion about any possibility for Ukraine to be represented in the European parliament or in other government bodies. There is no longer any discussion about the provision of Ukrainian citizens with the right to health and social services according to European standards, or any talk of a visa-free regime,” Medvedev added.
Furthermore, Medvedev explained that “the EU is in no hurry to invite Ukraine to the table of European powers as an equal power. It’s not even ready to offer it a child seat, and deliberately keeps it in the position of a ‘Poor Liza’,” Medvedev explained, referring to Karamzin’s story of a poor peasant girl who is taken advantage of by a rich aristocrat.
“It’s simply worth recalling the case of Turkey,” Medvedev noted. “The country signed an association agreement with Europe 51 years ago, and is still not a member of the EU. The issue has even become a source of jokes. In his own time [Prime Minister] Viktor Chernomyrdin, asked about when Ukraine would become a member of the European Union, answered ‘after Turkey.’ When asked when that would be, he answered ‘never’.”
The Prime Minister noted that Ukrainian authorities would also do well to consider the experiences of southeastern European countries who have ended up joining the EU. “It’s worth assessing what has happened in their economies; whether or not GDP rose, whether incomes rose or fell, and the unemployment dynamic. Most importantly, [it’s worth looking at whether] foreign investment has significantly increased, or, on the contrary, has it decreased a great deal. Bulgaria for example has seen unemployment increase from 6.9 percent in 2007 to 11.8 percent [in 2013] after entering the EU.
Foreign investment in the same period declined by nearly nine times (from 9.051 billion euros to 1,092 billion). And these countries are in no way worse off than Ukraine, and roughly comparable in terms of development, resource and climactic conditions,” Medvedev noted.
Medvedev also stated that the current government in Kiev has not been truthful with the Ukrainian people about the implications of signing the association agreement with the EU. “The Current Ukrainian leadership does not bother to focus the Ukrainian people’s attention on the matter of various “trifles”. It does not mention that while Ukraine has all the standard obligations of a candidate for the EU, it does not have the status of a candidate.
“In Ukraine, there was no public discussion of the document on association, no honest review of all its pros and cons – for the economy as a whole, for individual enterprises and various industries, for different groups in the population. For a long time the agreement was not even translated into the Ukrainian language,” the Prime Minister noted.
