Differentiated European Integration of Ukraine in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article offers a comparative analysis of Ukraine’s Association Agreement against the backdrop of other agreements of the EU with third countries that facilitate their partial integration into the EU’s common space of four freedoms, albeit without institutional membership (EEA Agreement of Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein; EU–Swiss Bilaterals, and Turkey’s Customs Union). In addition, this analysis includes the Stabilisation and Association Agreements of the Western Balkan countries and the former Europe Agreements of the Central European countries. The research draws on concepts of differentiated integration and external governance of the EU. The analysis is built along two dimensions: identification of the regulatory boundary (policy-taking: scope of transposition of the EU acquis, legal quality of transposition, and the type of supervision mechanism) and organizational boundary (policy-shaping: inclusion in the EU institutions). The analysis concludes that Ukraine’s Association Agreement compared with other EU integration agreements with third countries includes the largest structural asymmetry, that is, a biggest gap between the largest volume of acquis, which Ukraine has to incorporate into its national legislation on one hand, and the lowest level of institutional involvement of Ukraine in policy-shaping within the EU on the other.