{"id":168175,"date":"2015-07-26T22:04:30","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T22:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=168175"},"modified":"2015-07-27T01:38:30","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T01:38:30","slug":"ukraines-foreign-minister-implies-eu-membership-might-be-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/ukraines-foreign-minister-implies-eu-membership-might-be-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Implies EU Membership Might Be Impossible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s Euro-Integration website headlined on July 25th,\u00a0\u201cKlimkin: \u2018If Ukraine Won\u2019t Be an EU Member Within 5 Years, We Won\u2019t Ever\u2019,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, “Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin claims that if Kiev is required to wait 5 years before applying for membership in the EU, Ukraine\u2019s joining will be postponed\u00a0indefinitely.\u201d He says, \u201cIf we are forced to wait till 2020 to apply, it won\u2019t work even if we are forced to wait another 25 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Klimkin is quoted as saying that the longer Ukraine waits for membership, the less likely Ukraine\u2019s ultimate membership will be, because \u201cThe EU won\u2019t be the same 20 years from now; it will have undergone major changes.\u201d He seems to be suggesting that the EU is a moving target, and that it\u2019s getting farther from Ukraine, not nearer, with each year that passes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Minister Klimkin had previously expressed, on July 22nd, his condemnation of a visit to the former Ukrainian province of Crimea on the part of some members<\/span><\/a> of the French Parliament. Under the banner,\u00a0“Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine regarding\u00a0the breach of\u00a0the rules of entry to the temporarily occupied territory\u00a0of Ukraine by foreign\u00a0citizens,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0his Ministry said that,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“We perceive such a trip of French parliamentarians as an irresponsible\u00a0step and demonstration of their disrespect for sovereignty of Ukraine as\u00a0well as conscious neglect\u00a0of the legislation of Ukraine and the policy\u00a0of France and the European Union on non-recognition of the illegal\u00a0occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He thus laid down the gauntlet for the EU to prohibit any further such actions by representatives of any EU member-nation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By \u201cthe illegal occupation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea,\u201d he was referring to the freely chosen switch by the residents of Crimea for them to become citizens of Russia, and for them to abandon their association with Ukraine, which inclusion within Ukraine had been forced upon Crimeans in 1954 by the Soviet dictator Nikita Khruschev.\u00a0All opinion polls of Crimeans, both before and after the Ukrainian coup in February 2014<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(a coup<\/span><\/a> which polls showed was itself condemned by virtually all Crimeans), indicated an overwhelming desire of Crimeans to abandon Ukraine and to join Russia. However, unlike in the UK, where the residents of Scotland were granted the democratic ability to choose whether to remain as being a part of the UK, Ukraine did not accept a similar right of self-determination for the residents of Crimea. Instead, the post-coup government of Ukraine insists that it owns those people and the land on which they live, and that they have no right to affiliate or disaffiliate with a government of their own choosing.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is but one of many issues which Minister Klimkin might have had in mind when he said that, \u201cThe EU won\u2019t be the same 20 years from now; it will have undergone major changes.\u201d If France, or any other EU nation, were to recognize the legitimacy of the 16 March 2014 plebiscite in which Crimeans voted 97% to separate from Ukraine, that recognition of Crimeans\u2019 sovereignty over the land on which they live would severely reduce the possibility that Ukraine will ever be admitted into the EU.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet another issue between Ukraine and the EU was highlighted recently<\/span><\/a> when Klimkin expressed consternation that, as compared to the year prior to Ukraine\u2019s application to enter the EU, 16 of 22 European countries had increased (instead of, as expected, reduced) visa-barriers for Ukrainians seeking to enter them.<\/span><\/p>\n

For such reasons, Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Minister is demanding a speed-up in the process by which Ukraine will become a member-nation inside the EU \u2013 to rush the process, as an accomplished fact, a fait accompli<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Ukraine\u2019s Euro-Integration website headlined on July 25th,\u00a0\u201cKlimkin: \u2018If Ukraine Won\u2019t Be an EU Member Within 5 Years, We Won\u2019t Ever\u2019,\u201d\u00a0and reported that, “Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin claims that if Kiev is required to wait 5 years before applying for membership in the EU, Ukraine\u2019s joining will be postponed\u00a0indefinitely.\u201d He says, \u201cIf we are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":168177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,887,1360,535,59,524,55,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-168175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-crimea","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-global-news","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-russia","18":"tag-uk-news","19":"tag-usa-news","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}