The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area

State building and European integration in Ukraine

“…At the heart of this process is institutional and regulatory convergence with the EU, something which is achieved through the 'import of the acquis'. The density and precision of these undertakings departs from the previously vague and unspecific frameworks for cooperation between the EU and Ukraine (Dragneva and Wolczuk 2012;Van der Loo 2016). Therein lies the actual salience of the AA: it seeks not only to integrate but also to transform the associated countries at the same time (Adarov and Havlik 2016;Emerson and Movchan 2016).…”

The European Union as an Inadvertent Great Power: EU Actorness and the Ukraine Crisis

“…For this purpose, Ukraine accepted the binding and far‐reaching commitment to ensuring full legal compatibility with the EU's sectoral acquis . Detailed provisions address numerous areas of low politics, including competition policy, sanitary and phytosanitary standards, technical regulations, intellectual property rights, rules of origin and foreign investment (Van der Loo, ), and occupy the bulk of the AA's over 2,000 pages in the Official Journal . The AA also emphasizes the importance of democracy and rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, good governance, market economy and sustainable development (see Arts.…”

“…As an exemption, it decided that ‘for matters coming within Titles V and VI of the EU Treaty (CFSP and police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters), the negotiations shall be conducted with the Presidency, assisted by the SG/HR‘ (Council of the European Union, ). Negotiations of the political part of the AA started in 2007 and of the DCFTA‐related part in 2008 after Ukraine had fulfilled an economic precondition, namely accession to the WTO (Van der Loo, , pp. 104–105).…”

“…104–105). They were largely conducted by the Commission DG Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy, in charge from 2010 upon entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (Dinan, , p. 115), as well as, for the DCFTA, by DG Trade (Van der Loo, , p. 101). All this indicates the predominant concern of the EU with the low‐politics details of the treaty, rather than geopolitical strategy, while for Ukraine the treaty provided the basis for its European choice…”

“…Closer relations gradually corroborated the Ukrainian European choice as an alternative that several Ukrainian governments utilized well to mitigate Russian influence and to secure both economic and political benefits (Dragneva and Wolczuk, , p. 84; Popescu, , p. 28). Hence, then President Yanukovych continued negotiations and seemed to be prepared to sign the AA in November 2013 (Van der Loo, , pp. 107–108), although he did not overly lean toward the West.…”