Netherlands considering amending portions of Ukraine-EU association

The government of the Netherlands is considering amending some conditions of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, reported on June 6 the diepresse.com news site, citing anonymous Dutch diplomats. Among those amendments is eliminating cooperation between Ukraine and the EU in the defense sphere, or at minimum reducing such cooperation. The logic behind that is security is supposed to be the task of NATO, not the EU, the report said. The Dutch also want guarantees that Ukraine won’t gain automatic access to the EU’s financial sources, the report said. Thirdly, the Association Agreement shouldn’t guarantee Ukraine’s EU membership.

To approve the amendments, the Netherlands – which has the EU Council presidency until June 30 – needs to gain agreement from all EU member-states, which ratified the agreement in its current draft, the report said. “We are gaining positive signals from the other 27 member-states,” said an anonymous Dutch diplomat. “There’s an understanding among EU member-states of our problem, which we received after the referendum.” Poland and the three Baltic states oppose the amendments, particularly with regard to military cooperation, the report said.

Zenon Zawada: The Russians have succeeded in creating a dead end in the Donbas peace talks, and now we see a possible dead end emerging with the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. We thought it would be possible that the Dutch government would simply ignore the referendum results. But if it sees the need to take them seriously, a big problem emerges in light of the fact that the EU’s official position has always been that the Association Agreement can’t be amended. Coupled with resistance from Ukraine’s neighbors (Poland and the Baltics), we see another case of diplomatic gridlock for Ukraine.