| Abstract [eng] |
“Ukraine's problematic accession to the EU. The Causes of a stagnating process” Since the 2014 Crimea annexation and war eastern Ukraine broke out the country had a well established prowestern goal and a proeuropean government aiming to eventually join the EU. However in 2022 after unprovoked invasion of Russia to Ukraine certain questions appeared why hasn’t Ukraine not only not joined the EU, but hasn’t even reseaved a clear membership perspective and an official candidate status? In this Masters thesis I am trying to find answers to this question. • The aim of thesis is to find out the reasons behind EU’s reluctance to grant candidacy to Ukraine In order to advance the aim of this thesis two hypothesis are constructed. 1) EU’s reluctance is caused by Kiev’s lack of preparedness to receive official candidacy status. 2) EU is suffering from “enlargement fatigue” which causes EU to pay little attention to Ukraine’s proeuropean asspirations. The work is constructed on European integration capacity theoretical framework and a postfunctionalism theory of integration. This theoretical framework allows us to evalue EU’s internal and external integration capacity and Ukraine’s level of preparedness to advance. The choosing of postfunctionalism is based in on it’s claim that in recent years politization and domestic policy factors had an huge impact on European integration process. Based on this theoretical framework I conduct empirical reaserch and come to certain coclusions: 1) I argue that despite positive reforms in Ukraine and move a forward, Kiev is still has certain problems to address especially in the state governance and administrating the country departments, which may cause EU to be reluctant towards Ukrane’s aspiration. However, accordingly EU’s internal capacity to enlarge is good and previous enlargement rounds, despite certain people negative opinion, haven’t made a significant negative impact on EU’s decision or policy making. 2) In proving second hypothesis, I come to the conclusion that one of the main reasons behind EU’s reluctance towards enlargement process is fatigue caused not by enlargemet, but by fatigue caused by crisis and geopolitical challenges in the 2nd decade. These challenges had a major impact on increased politization, which caused fatigue. In proving this hyphotesis I argue that EU needs to sort out it’s own problems and doesn’t feel like pressing the enlargement process. |
