Martin Sandbu (“These tools could help bring Ukraine into the EU”, Opinion, February 13) is correct to flag the importance of turning the European Stability Mechanism into a properly federal European monetary fund that could be used for postwar reconstruction.
But his call for Ukraine to join the European Economic Area with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, is both unsuitable and unnecessary. The EEA is not a springboard to full accession but, rather, a substitute for membership. Dating from 1991, the EEA is undemocratic and out of date. Ukraine already enjoys a closer association agreement with the EU, signed in 2014. It establishes a deep and comprehensive free trade area dedicated to dynamic alignment on the acquis communautaire, the accumulation of the bloc’s common law, from directives and decisions to regulations and implementing acts.
When the fighting stops there is no reason to doubt that this integration process will pick up again. One further democratic elaboration, however, is desirable. To grant Ukraine a qualified majority vote in the EU Council (without a veto) on all internal market legislation that affected it, would not only extend the EU’s normative power boldly but also burnish its democratic credentials. Such a privileged partnership would constitute a new category of affiliate EU membership, useful either as a staging post for full membership or as a long stay parking place. I can think of another large borderland country which might also wish to affiliate with the EU in this way.
Andrew Duff
Former MEP 1999-2014, Cambridge, UK
