Your editorial comments (“The EU’s regrettable absence on Ukraine”, FT View, January 11) concerning the EU’s embarrassing and self-centred complaints about its exclusion from the top table discussions between the US, Nato and Russia are wholly fair and could have gone even further.
When I was European commissioner for external relations (1999 to 2004) one of my first meetings was with a minister from Ukraine. After the usual pleasantries, the minister asked me directly whether the EU would accept Ukraine’s ambition to be a negotiating partner for membership.
I repeated the formula which had been agreed and which we were all obliged to repeat for many years. It is still probably repeated today. I said that the EU accepted Ukraine’s European vocation but I could not commit to opening negotiations for membership. My understanding of the hypocritical hollowness of this verbal formula has increased over the years. But European history is nothing if not complex. Both EU officials who were present at the meeting as part of my team told me afterwards they were the sons of families who had lived and worked in what had once been Poland but since the war and the changes of national boundaries had become Ukraine.
I believe the EU — with British leadership when we were members of the EU — should have strongly supported Ukraine’s wish to be a member of the EU itself, in contrast with the current ambiguous position taken on whether Ukraine should be part of Nato.
The Russians would doubtless have opposed this but it would have been more obviously none of their business. This should have been settled long ago, as it was for other east European countries and the Baltic states.
Why on earth did we think that, say, Bulgaria was a more acceptable candidate for European membership than Ukraine?
Lord Patten of Barnes
House of Lords, London SW1, UK
Letter: Recalling the Brussels brush-off given to Ukraine
Pinoy Variant