European Union | Ukrainian political scientists ask Spain to get involved in their country’s entry into the EU and support their cause in Latin America

2023-06-11 12:24:57

Ukraine is doing their duties and wait to enter as soon as possible in the European Union. The country faces an invasion launched from a State with resources far superior and has managed to elicit solidarity from Europe and the rest of the developed world, but in Latin America and the so-called About Global, fails to convey this message with the same clarity and forcefulness, for which it needs to intensify its diplomatic efforts in these regions of the world. With these two messages, representatives of the main study centers and ideas laboratories of the Slavic country have come to Spain invited by the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB), aware of the opportunity that the presidency will offer them in the coming months Spanish of the 27.

Oksana Bulan, a researcher at the Ukrainian Center for European Policy (UCEP), has presented, during a meeting with journalists, an assessment of the implementation of the Association Agreement between the Union and her country, in force since 2014. According to the data handled by the UCEP, By mid-2022, 77.2% of the sectors designated by both parties for standardization with the standards had experienced progress, between initial and advanced. In particular, in areas such as business law, public procurement or technical barriers to trade. On the other hand, sectors such as intellectual property or competition remained behind.

The experts highlighted the resilience of the Ukrainian economy despite the war, which during the past month of May has grown “and 20%“, after the enormous drop, in double digits, experienced as a result of the invasion during 2022. And they defended the extension of the sanctions to organizations that do not necessarily have to do with the Russian military aggression such as Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency , whose staff have assumed control of the Zaporiyia nuclear power plantconverted, according to them, into a tool of Kremlin to blackmail his government and the West under the threat of a nuclear disaster.

Spanish Presidency

During their stay, the Ukrainian political scientists maintained contacts with members of the Spanish Government, with the hope that in the months in which the Madrid Executive holds the presidency of the EU, Ukrainian accession will receive a significant boost. “After Spain, it will be the turn of Hungary and we know that we cannot expect anything, that it will not boost income”, admitted Hennadiy MaksakExecutive Director of the Ukrainian Prism Council for Foreign Policy. Viktor OrbánHungarian prime minister, is one of the Kremlin’s closest allies among the Twenty-seven.

Maksak and the rest of the political scientists admitted that the government of Volodímir Zelenski had concentrated its diplomatic efforts on obtaining the backing of the Western powers, which has allowed Moscow to largely achieve in other areas of the world such as Latin America his narrative of the facts and get countries like Brazil to also hold kyiv responsible for the invasion and maintain a some equidistance. In this area, the Ukrainian political scientist in favor of Spain becoming the “possible mediator” between Kiev y Latin Americagiven the cultural proximity of Madrid with that part of the world.