"Part of the border between Ukraine and Poland is very unusual. Giant fish between Poland and our state symbolize the conventionality of borders between countries," the press service of the State Border Service reported.
"The border between the two European states in this place is annually decorated before the local festival of arts (Land-art festival)," the press service added.
This border, defined by the 1945 post WWII settlement between the western Allies and the Soviet Union, has, in fact, witnessed and been the cause of many troubles in recent years, especially for refugees and asylum seekers.
The so-called Curzon Line, the history of which, with minor variations, goes back to the period following World War I, was drawn for the first time by the Supreme War Council as the demarcation line between the two newly emerging states, the Second Polish Republic, and the Soviet Union. This proposal was put forward by the British Foreign Secretary George Curzon, to serve as a diplomatic basis for the future border agreement, however it was never implemented because the war carried on, and territorial advantages presented themselves to Poland in the post WWI conflicts with the Soviet Union up until 1939.
However, the line became a major geopolitical factor during World War II, when Joseph Stalin invaded eastern Poland and split its territory along the Curzon Line with Adolf Hitler. The Western powers entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union following Operation Barbarossa. Throughout the war until the Tehran Conference, the Allies did not agree that Poland's future eastern border should be kept at the same Curzon Line drawn in 1939; but Churchill's position changed after the Soviet victory at the Battle of Kursk.
A Poland-Ukraine border first formed, briefly, in the aftermath of the Polish-Ukrainian War in 1919. The Treaty of Warsaw of 1920 divided the disputed territories in Poland's favor along the Zbruch River. Next year, however, Ukraine lost its independence to the Soviet Union, and its remaining territories were split between Poland and the Ukrainian SSR in the Peace of Riga.
Poland-Ukraine border
The dissolution of the Soviet Union into a number of post-Soviet states transformed the Poland-Soviet border into the chain of Poland-Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Poland-Belarus and Poland-Ukraine borders. Poland and Ukraine have confirmed the border on 18 May 1992. It is the longest of Polish eastern borders. The border became much more open compared to the Soviet times, when despite being part of the Eastern Bloc, crossing was very difficult. As the border was opened to mass traffic, the number of people crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border begun raising steadily since 1990, stabilizing around 2000s. Approximately 3 million Ukrainians crossed the border in the 1990s, annually. One of the peak numbers was recorded in 2001, with about 12 million people crossing the border.
The enlargement of the EU over the years has grown from the original six to twenty-eight today.
Poland's agreement with the EEC came into force on 1 February 1994, three months after the Maastricht Treaty came into effect. The first step was the establishment of the Commission for the Unification of the Republic of Poland with the EU, whose task was to supervise the implementation of the new agreements. Talks at ministerial levels in the Polish Parliament were conducted within this commission. The Parliamentary Unification Committee acted as a forum for relations between the Polish Parliament and the European Parliament.
The so-called EU enlargement process was formally launched at a meeting of the Council for General Affairs on 30 March 1998. At the time, Poland declared 31 December 2002 as the date of readiness for membership into the European Union.
A study of the compatibility of candidate countries' current laws with EU law began on 31 March 1998 in Brussels. After the end of the study, the actual negotiations were undertaken at the same time at the request of the candidate countries, although individually with each of the candidates from 10 November 1998. Polish negotiations with the EU ended during the EU summit in Copenhagen, on 13 December 2002.
The Treaty of Accession was subject to approval and adoption by an absolute majority vote in the European Parliament on 9 April 2003 and unanimously by the Council of the European Union on 14 April 2003. The next stage was ratification of the treaty by all the member countries in accordance with their constitutional requirements (except for Ireland, where it was ratified after a nationwide referendum while the other Member States adopted it in the form of a parliamentary vote). The Treaty entered into force after the EU ratification procedure.
In Poland, the final process of its adoption took place in the form of a national referendum on 7–8 June 2003.
Poles answered the following question:
"Do you give permission for the Republic of Poland to enter into the European Union?"
The National Electoral Commission's published results state that:
"Do you give permission for the Republic of Poland to enter into the European Union?"
The National Electoral Commission's published results state that:
58.85% of eligible voters turned up to vote
77.45% of those answered YES.
22.55% of those answered NO.
The
Treaty of Accession 2003 signed on the 16 April 2003 in Athens was the
legal basis for 10 countries Central and Southern Europe (Cyprus, the
Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Polish, Slovakia,
Slovenia and Hungary) entering the European Union.
On 1 May 2004 Poland became a full member of the European Union, along with 9 other European countries.
On 1 May 2004 Poland became a full member of the European Union, along with 9 other European countries.
The 2007 enlargement of the European Union saw Bulgaria and Romania join the European Union (EU) on 1 January 2007.
With Poland joining European Union in 2004 the border has become one of the external borders of the European Union. It is one of four EU-Ukraine borders, the others being the Hungary-Ukraine border, Romania-Ukraine border and the Slovakia-Ukraine border.
As it is an entry point to the Schengen Area, this introduced a visa requirement for Ukrainian citizens entering Poland as of October 2003. In the period October 2003-September 2004 Polish authorities issued about 620,000 visas to Ukrainians. The visa requirement has not reduced the traffic significantly, as it returned to the prior levels within a year. Another peak has occurred in 2006, when there were almost 20 million border crossings. In 2008 Poland and Ukraine adopted policies on local border traffic (put into effect in 2009). This agreement introduced local border traffic permits allowing holders to cross the border for up to 90 days per half-year. 2009 saw approximately 12 million border crossings on the Poland-Ukraine border.
Beyond this frontier a number of countries, including Ukraine, have a governmental and political relationship with the EU as part of the Eastern Partnership.
It was presented by the foreign ministers of Poland and Sweden at the EU's General Affairs and External Relations Council in Brussels on 26 May 2008. The Eastern Partnership was inaugurated by the European Union in Prague, Czech Republic on 7 May 2009.
The Eastern Partnership complements the Northern Dimension and the Union for the Mediterranean by providing an institutionalised forum for discussing visa agreements, free trade deals, and strategic partnership agreements with the EU's eastern neighbours, while avoiding the controversial topic of accession to the European Union. Its geographical scope consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Unlike the Union for the Mediterranean, the Eastern Partnership does not have its own secretariat, but is controlled directly by the European Commission.
In May 2008, Poland and Sweden put forward a joint proposal for an Eastern Partnership with Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, with Russia and Belarus participating in some aspects. Eventually, Belarus joined the initiative as a full member, while Russia does not participate at all. The Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski said "We all know the EU has enlargement fatigue. We have to use this time to prepare as much as possible so that when the fatigue passes, membership becomes something natural" It was discussed at the European Council on 19 and 20 June 2008, along with the Union for the Mediterranean. The Czech Republic endorsed the proposal completely, while Bulgaria and Romania were cautious, fearing that the Black Sea Forum for Partnership and Dialogue and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation could be undermined. Meanwhile, Germany, France, and others were not happy with the possibility that the Eastern Partnership could be seen as a stepping stone to membership (especially for Ukraine), while Poland and other Eastern states have explicitly welcomed this effect.
The Eastern Partnership was officially launched in May 2009 when the Czech Republic invited the leaders of the six members of the initiative. Meanwhile, Germany attended the summit to signal their alarm at the economic situation in the East. Russia accused the EU of trying to carve out a new sphere of influence, which the EU denied, stating that they were "responding to the demands of these countries...and the economic reality is that most of their trade is done with the EU".
Ukraine is one of six post-Soviet nations to be invited to co-operate with the EU within the new multilateral framework that the Eastern partnership is expected to establish. However, Kiev pointed out that it remains pessimistic about the "added value" of this initiative. Indeed, Ukraine and the EU have already started the negotiations on new, enhanced political and free-trade agreements (Association and Free-Trade Agreements). Also, there has been some progress in liberalising the visa regime despite persistent problems in the EU Member States' visa approach towards Ukrainians.[citation needed]
That is why Ukraine has a specific view of the Eastern Partnership Project. According to the Ukrainian presidency, it should correspond, in case of his country, to the strategic foreign policy objective, i.e. the integration with the EU. Yet, the Eastern Partnership documents (the European Council Declaration of May 2009) do not confirm such priorities as political and economic integration or lifting visas.
Ukraine has expressed enthusiasm about the project. Ukraine deputy premier Hryhoriy Nemyria said that the project is the way to modernise the country and that they welcome the Eastern Partnership policy, because it uses 'de facto' the same instruments as for EU candidates.
Under the Eastern Partnership, Poland and Ukraine have reached a new agreement replacing visas with simplified permits for Ukrainians residing within 30 km of the border. Up to 1.5 million people may benefit from this agreement which took effect on 1 July 2009.
Meanwhile . . .
euronews (in English)
Published on 11 Jun 2017
Visa-free travel for Ukrainians visiting the EU has arrived, and one mother is wasting no time in taking advantage of the new rules.
Irina Levko’s two-year-old son is disabled and has been receiving treatment in Europe.
Now the family can avoid paperwork and long queues at embassies before travelling.
She said: "Before, we had to prepare so many documents, about your income, job certificates. And now we have no obstacles.
"If we need to go, we can just pack our things and leave."
. . . at the same time . . .
Patrick Wintour
Diplomatic editor. . . and in the lead up to the 2017 Eastern Partnership summit . . .
Tue 14 Feb 2017 06.00 GMT
A core group of European Union founding countries is to risk the fury of Visegrád member states as it forces the resurrection of a two-speed Europe back on to the Brussels agenda six decades after the treaty of Rome.
Italy, which is hosting an EU summit next month marking the 60th anniversary of the founding pact, is increasingly confident that France and Germany will back the plan for a post-Brexit roadmap, despite bruising exchanges with central Europeans about the best way to respond to the challenge of populism.
A two-speed Europe would allow a core of countries to press ahead with closer cooperation and integration on finance, tax and security, leaving a peripheral group to continue in a looser federation.
The Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, calling for a single EU welfare system and action against austerity, said recently in London that greater integration was essential to respond to “the illusions of populism”.
But countries likely to be outside the core, such as Poland, fear that the inner group would start to take unilateral decisions with a continent-wide effect. They were aghast that the first draft of the Rome declaration made no mention of the nation state, and are wary of an EU with an integrationist group at its core.
But Italy believes it can garner enough support among founding members for the eventual declaration to back the concept. Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands – who, with France, West Germany and Italy, formed the “inner six” of the original European communities – have already expressed their support.
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The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has also allied herself to the cause, saying this month: “We certainly learned from the history of the last years that there will be as well a European Union with different speeds, that not all will participate every time in all steps of integration.”
Italian officials seized on her remarks, saying they were her most public endorsement to date of the model and opened the way for a reference in the Rome document, which is still being drafted.
Sandro Gozi, Italy’s Europe minister, said: “We want to have a core shared by everyone and then there will be specific policies in which certain countries can move ahead, without other countries imposing a veto.
“In a union of 27 countries it is utopian that everyone can move forward with the same timing and objectives. A group can act as political vanguard and proceed in a more expeditious way to reach new common objectives, such as defence, economic security, combating inequalities and support to the young people.”
Gozi added that it would be easier for the EU to pursue such reforms following Britain’s decision to leave. “With the UK outside the EU it will probably be easier to move ahead with greater cooperation in this field,” said Gozi”. “It will be a win-win situation.”
The revival of the idea – long discussed in European circles – underlines the extent to which the UK will be negotiating in the coming Brexit talks with a distracted institution more interested in its own, internal reforms than a soon-to-be departed member.
But the Visegrád group – comprising Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – is alarmed.
The powerful head of Poland’s ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, last week warned after meeting Merkel that any move toward a two-speed European Union would lead to the bloc falling apart, as well as the end of her political career in German elections later this year.
A two-speed Europe would lead to the “breakdown, and in fact the liquidation, of the European Union in its current sense”, he said.
The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, worried that internal divisions could be exploited by the UK in the Brexit talks, is understood to be keen to minimise talk of a rift. He said on Sunday he still saw the Rome summit taking place on 25 March as largely celebratory and challenged advocates of a two-speed EU to be more precise about how it would function.
. . . on 24 November, leaders from the EU’s member states and the six Eastern partner countries will gather in Brussels for the 2017 Eastern Partnership summit.
Max Fras previews the summit and assesses what the future might hold for the Eastern Partnership given the delicate situation between the EU and some of its Eastern neighbours.
The upcoming Eastern Partnership (EaP) summit in Brussels on 24 November will mark another two years of uneasy relations between the EU and its Eastern neighbours. Whilst the most EU-minded states (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) have reached the most important milestones (association agreements and visa liberalisation), the outer circle (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus) seems set to stabilise its weak relationship with the bloc through other types of agreements.
Despite the overall weak character of mutual relations, the prospects for EU-EaP co-operation look stable with reasons for cautious optimism. On the other hand, as both internal EU pressures and external challenges emerge, the initiative needs to adapt in order to regain momentum.
The AA Club
The three EaP countries most eager to strengthen ties with the EU concluded their association agreements in 2014 (all have now entered into force). For Georgia and Moldova, this was achieved with relative ease. The Ukrainian path to association was not without controversy, but since the agreement’s signing the country has kept a steady pro-European course in its foreign policy. On top of the association agreements, but through an independent process, all three countries now benefit from visa-free access to the EU.
It should be noted that all three visa liberalisation processes took longer than anticipated and were accompanied by alarmist forecasts of mass migration and a potential ‘crime wave’ from the East. Since entering force, however, there has been remarkably little media coverage in the EU. Indeed, it is questionable whether many EU citizens (beyond countries neighbouring the EaP region) are aware of the existence of visa-free regimes with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Unfortunately for both the AA Club and the EU, there are no strategic landmarks for these states in the foreseeable future. A recent study on the prospects for Western Balkan EU candidate countries reveals that most of them, despite a markedly closer relationship with the EU, will not be in a position to accede to the bloc before 2050. This means that the AA Club faces years of painstaking reform and incremental integration using the instruments already at hand. Rapid convergence or ‘big bang’ expansion similar to 2004 is extremely unlikely.
The outer circle
For the outer circle, including Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus, relations with the EU have been patchy at best, but there are reasons for cautious optimism. After Armenia’s sudden withdrawal from EU association agreement negotiations in 2013, following its decision to join the Eurasian Union, there was little hope for any improvement, and yet since 2015 the EU and Armenian government have managed to put together a new Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the draft of which has recently been released, suggesting that the parties expect to sign it in the near future.
Relations with Azerbaijan are also likely to improve a notch. According to sources at the EEAS and European Commission, Azerbaijan has been making more positive noises lately about the future of the Partnership with a view to increasing its involvement in some areas, notably with respect to economic and development co-operation – a clear echo of the country’s weakening local currency, decreasing oil and gas revenues and overall bleak economic prospects.
Last but not least, in the context of the renewed European Neighbourhood Policy, the EU has doubled its package of bilateral assistance to Belarus to support private sector development and help strengthen institutions in 2016. Following President Tusk’s surprise invitation to President Lukashenko for the 2017 summit, rumours of his participation have neither been confirmed nor denied by Minsk. Whatever the final decision may be, Belarus is likely to continue its participation in the EaP in the near future.
The summit
Although the general expectations for the summit are modest, some signs indicate that the initiative’s weak yet stable status is about to be confirmed. The final declaration is likely to be a rather bland mixture of general reassurances of mutual respect and EU support for a limited number of areas of reform. Due to political opposition in EU capitals and a lack of funding, especially with ‘budgetary Brexit’ looming post-2020, none of the ambitious ideas tabled by the European Parliament (including a trust fund and an EaP+ model for most advanced members) have been considered by EU leaders.
The most heated discussions between EU and EaP diplomats concern Kyiv’s continued insistence on the EU acknowledging its European aspirations, a pledge that does not warm hearts in EU capitals. Most recent reports from Brussels suggest that it is most likely to become a unilateral declaration by the Ukrainian government.
On the other side of the Black Sea, Yerevan and Baku continue to clash over the inclusion of a reference to the territorial integrity of all EaP countries – Baku has sought to make the inclusion of such wording a red line for its participation in all multilateral forums. In a sign of an apparent softening in Baku’s principled stance, the declaration may skip the clause altogether.
In the absence of a more ambitious agenda, youth issues and education are likely to gain more prominence. The EU is about to launch a new Youth Package for EU-EaP youth co-operation, with a potential promise to go as far as doubling its funding for cross-border youth mobility, volunteering and training as well as other minor initiatives such as the European School.
Last but not least, the declaration will include a reference to the next summit taking place in 2019, a modest yet important improvement on earlier speculation on the possible winding up of the whole EaP initiative.
The way forward
For the partnership to regain momentum, EU political actors need to adapt to the changing environment. First, the EU’s member states, notably those most eager to see the EaP continue, will need to come together and jointly push for a more ambitious reform agenda, especially in Moldova and Ukraine – this will require a significant change in Poland’s increasingly anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and the rebuilding of links between the Visegrád four and their Baltic and Scandinavian allies (the recent joint op-ed by Poland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Witold Waszczykowski, and Sweden’s Margot Wallström is a good sign).
Second, EU governments should focus on highlighting and strengthening the benefits of internal reform in all EaP member states instead of moving goalposts and offering only token rewards and declarations. The European Commission should also stay the course in implementing the EaP’s technical assistance and development co-operation, continuing to identify tangible deliverables and outcomes for local populations in the EaP.
Finally, to limit Brexit-related damage to the EaP and its own foreign policy in Eastern Europe, the British government should seek ways of continued co-operation with EU member states and EU institutions in the EaP, especially in areas where its expertise is most valued such as legal and economic reform and the increasingly important strategic communications field that includes countering Russian propaganda efforts, where sustainable impact can only be achieved through international co-operation. Signalling continued willingness to work with such programmes would be a low-cost way to build goodwill with a number of EU member states (especially those keen on the Eastern Partnership) and reassure EaP countries of the UK’s continued engagement.
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