The Kremlin is the main winner of the Dutch popular rejection of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement
By Andreas Umland
"The Kremlin is the main winner of the Dutch popular rejection
of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement"
On 6 April 2016, the Netherlands
held a national referendum where the Dutch people were asked speak out for or
against the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine – a large treaty between
Brussels and Kyiv, signed in 2014 and ratified in 2015. As expected, the
Association enemies won the referendum with approximately two thirds speaking
out against, and circa one in favor. Yet, for everybody who knows a bit about
the EU, the nationwide, expensive and low-turnout Dutch plebiscite on this
EU-Ukraine contract looks itself odd.
Why was the Dutch referendum such an
unusual procedure? The European Community/Union has, during the last 60 years,
concluded dozens of association, free-trade, stabilization and cooperation
agreements with countries around the world ranging from South Africa to Chile.
Association and similar arrangements are neither new nor exceptional, but an
old, standard tool of EU foreign policy, and practiced by other international
organizations too. They are, for good reasons, mostly ignored by the general
public in Europe and elsewhere.
It is true that the recent
Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia are larger than
previous such EU treaties. These three agreements include provisions for
establishing, between the three countries and the Union, so-called Deep and
Comprehensive Free Trade Areas. While one can thus make an argument that these
treaties are somewhat novel, this is still hardly enough ground for elevating
the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement to an issue suitable for a national
referendum. In view of the relative inconsequentiality of the EU’s association
agreements for the Netherlands’ future, organizing a popular vote on one of
these treaties is bizarre.
This is even more so as the EU’s new
agreement with Ukraine – like those with Moldova and Georgia – does not include
an explicit EU membership perspective. Although large, these three new European
covenants thus remain classical international treaties that, so far, do not
envisage a fundamental change of the EU itself. Why did Dutch citizens care to
vote on an EU association agreement that does not mention a membership
perspective? It would make more sense to hold, instead, referenda on the EU’s
older association agreements with Turkey or the Western Balkan states that do
include membership perspectives, and are thus potentially more consequential
for Dutch citizens.
It is true that one day Ukraine
could become member of the Union, and that many Ukrainians see this Agreement
as a stepping stone towards EU accession – even though they know that this can
only happen in the distant future. It is also true that each new member country
of the EU changes the Union to one degree or another, as well as, indirectly,
also the Netherlands’ location in world affairs. Yet, why had neither Holland,
nor any other member state of the EU so far bothered to conduct a popular vote
on the accession of other countries to the EC/EU? Why had the Dutch apparently
not cared enough about the simultaneous accession of 10 East European countries
in 2004/2007 to the EU, yet they, on 6 April 2016, expressed their national
will on a mere foreign treaty of the EU with another East European country?
Over the last two years, pro-Kremlin
Russian and other enemies of the Ukrainian nation have been proclaiming loudly
that the EU’s Association Agreement with Kyiv violates Russian interests, and
thus destabilizes European security. Yet, this Agreement is mainly about trade,
and not an anti-Russian pact. It does not prevent Ukraine from having
free-trade and other far-reaching agreements with third parties, including
Russia. Russia’s wish that Ukraine should enter a Moscow-dominated trade and
customs bloc, like the recently established Eurasian Economic Union, had never
any significant support among Ukraine’s political elite, not even in the former
pro-Russian administrations of Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kuchma and Viktor
Yanukovych.
The Kremlin too late, in the
process, signaled its unexpected opposition Kyiv’s association with Brussels.
Instead, it had earlier signaled its consent to Ukraine even entering the EU,
and for years simply ignored Ukraine’s negotiations of the treaty with the EU.
Only in 2013, after the Agreement had been already fully formulated and
initialed, Russia came strongly out against it. As EU officials will confirm,
the Kremlin’s claims about allegedly large Russian losses from Ukraine’s
association with the EU are hyperbolic. Moscow’s loudly pronounced fears are
disproportionate to the treaty’s actual repercussions for Russian-Ukrainian
trade – which has recently, because of the war, been reduced to a minimum
anyway. Russia’s economic damages from its aggressive reaction to the
Association Agreement already now by far exceed any losses it may be suffering
from the treaty’s implementation.
The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement
is neither important for the Netherlands, nor does it mean much for the
internal affairs of the EU, nor is it, as such, a threat to European security.
What makes it nevertheless so explosive is the concern to Moscow that this
Agreement constitutes Ukraine’s chance to become a truly liberal-democratic and
economically dynamic country. The agreement provides Ukrainians today with the
hope for a survival of their young state, as well as for a brighter future and
new opportunities for their children. If successfully implemented, the
Agreement will help Ukraine to gradually become a politically stable and
economically successful member of larger Europe.
It is this prospect that would
indeed constitute a grave threat to Putin’s kleptocratic clique: Ukraine’s
consolidation and rebirth could encourage the Russian people to rise and demand
political change similar to the one the Ukrainians enacted with their two
initially peaceful uprisings of 2004 and 2013/2014. A diffusion of EU values
and ideas via Ukraine to Russia would be the end of the Putin system. That is
the predominant reason why the Kremlin reacted to aggressively to Ukraine’s
turn to the EU.
On 17 July 2014, the 298 crew
members and passengers, most of them Dutch citizens, of flight MH17 became
victims of Russia’s current rulers’ ruthless resistance against the spread of
democracy and freedom, in Eastern Europe. Today few informed observers would
question the Kremlin’s full responsibility for this horrible event: The high-tech
anti-aircraft missile that hit the airliner at an altitude of over 10 km must
have been of Russian origin, and could have been operated only by well-trained,
i.e. Russian, soldiers. Some commentators in the Netherlands and elsewhere
still blame the Ukrainian state for not timely identifying the emerging threat
for civilian air transport in the Donbass. What they forget, however, is that
the Ukrainian state was not any longer present in, and had incomplete
information on, the so-called “separatist” territories where the Russian
high-tech installation had appeared shortly before the incident. The Dutch
Safety Board, in its recent report on the event, criticizes the – in July 2014
– fragile Ukrainian state for not recognizing the growing risk. Yet, the Dutch
Safety Board did not mention, in its report, another state which had full
knowledge of the risk of using high-tech anti-aircraft weapons in Ukraine –
because that state had purposefully sent these weapons into the Ukrainian state
in order to destabilize it and kill Ukrainians.
The obvious weakness of the
Ukrainian state that many Westerners lament with regard to its handling of the
unclear situation in summer 2014 was also what, in the first place, had led to
the Russian aggression against Ukraine, in spring 2014. The Ukrainian state was
not only unable to prevent the death of almost three hundred civilians on
flight MH17. The Ukrainian state was, in 2014, also not in a position to
protect its own borders, organize its own army, and to save the life of at
least 9000 Ukrainians who have died since, as a result of Russia’s hybrid war
against Ukraine. The small Netherlands, as one of the larger Western trading
partners of, and investors in, Russia are – like various other EU countries
economically engaged with Moscow – indirectly co-financing the Kremlin’s
foreign military operations in Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria – including
the construction and deployment of expensive BUK anti-aircraft missiles.
The citizens of the Netherlands have
nevertheless, in their referendum, decided to make a present the Kremlin, as
their No vote constitutes a major symbolic victory in its hybrid war against
Ukraine. To be sure, the Dutch popular rejection of the EU-Ukraine Association
Agreement will have few practical consequences for today’s foreign and domestic
affairs of either the EU or the Netherlands. It collected only slightly more
than the 30% minimum turnout needed, and will, in any way, not cancel the
Association Agreement.
However, the rejection by Hollands’
population of the Association Agreement is a propaganda triumph for Putin, will
be a lasting embarrassment for the Dutch nation, and constitutes a public
humiliation of millions of Ukrainians who, during the last years, have been
fighting both peacefully and, on the East Ukrainian battlefields, with arms for
their national liberation and European integration. The Dutch referendum vote
against Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU is a setback for the development
towards a peaceful and united Europe, and a stab in the back of Russia’s
democratic opposition to Putin. The Dutch vote will send a disturbing signal to
other nations of the post-Soviet area, including the Russian people, who are
trying to free themselves from the Kremlin’s current power holders’ neo-authoritarian
tutelage, and to become instead parts of larger Europe.
About the Author:
Andreas Umland, Dr. phil., Ph. D.,
is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in
Kyiv, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” published
by ibidem-Verlag in Stuttgart, and distributed, outside Europe, by
Columbia University Press.
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