When it comes to Ukraine joining the EU, Poland may not exactly prove to be Ukraine's best friend.
Trenchant Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, was rendered red faced recently by a prankster, who interviewed him, pretending to be former Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko.
Sikorski illuminated a number of granular and controversial policy issues related to the Ukraine war. His most telling comments focussed on Ukraine’s aspiration to join the European Union, which he described as a process ‘that will take a decade or more’.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Zelensky has been pushing for immediate or fast-tracked EU membership for Ukraine. Ukraine has campaigned hard for this, the EU finally opening accession negotiations in June 2024. Sikorski’s comments remind us what others have voiced quietly: that it won’t be quick and easy.
More significantly, he hints at reasons why it might not be possible at all, on terms that Ukraine would like.
Despite being British, I’m a passionate believer in the European project and I think it is right for Ukraine to focus on future membership. Unlike many, I have always seen the EU as first and foremost an economic project. When I ended my posting to Russia in February 2019, I drove from Moscow to England, passing through Ukraine and into the EU at the Polish border. I saw the moderating influence on relationships between citizens of very different states, by opening borders to free movement and commerce.
The EU advertising slogan describes the enlargement process as a “geostrategic investment in peace, security, stability and prosperity.” But it’s not simply a matter of peace and security. It’s also a matter of money. The EU works on the basis of richer countries subsidising the poorer, in a carefully negotiated and hotly contested settlement that has been in place for twenty years since the last big bang enlargement. Ten wealthier countries, led by Germany, pay more to the EU than they receive, and subsidize the 17 less wealthy countries who receive more EU funds than they pay to the EU budget. An easy concept to grasp.
So, even though Poland has burgeoned economically since the end of the Cold War, it still receives more EU funding that it pays in. In fact, Poland receives more EU funds than any other European country, because it has such a large population, with net inflows of 7 billion euros in 2023.
But Ukraine’s economy is four and a half times smaller than Poland’s. It is the poorest country in Europe — in fact, poorer now than Moldova — with the sixth largest population. It has a larger population than all the other EU aspirant countries combined. It would be, by some considerable margin, the largest recipient of EU funds in the event of accession.
Take agriculture, where subsidies are carefully protected by existing EU member states precisely because of the domestic political blowback from farmers to any proposed change in funding and, therefore, livelihoods. Consider the protests by Polish farmers to the flood of cheap Ukrainian grain. Another insight during the prank call was Sikorski’s visible irritation at Zelensky’s proposed meeting with Polish farmers on the border in February, which the pole described as a stunt.”
Should it join the EU on the same terms as everyone else, Ukraine would account for a quarter of all farmland in Europe and be eligible for 96.8 billion euros or around a quarter of the total Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) seven-year funding envelope of 378.5 billion euros. That would mean cuts of 20% to farmers in other EU countries, and widespread resistance from agricultural lobby groups.
I remember bitter protests by French farmers about British produce after the UK joined the European Economic Community, as it was called back then. Little surprise then, that President Macron of France said shortly after war started that EU membership for Ukraine will take decades. France would lose its place as the largest recipient of CAP funds if Ukraine joined.
There’s a wider problem. All of the new countries that want to join the EU are poorer countries. The EU budget wouldn’t survive contact with enlargement with the funding arrangements as they are now. Some countries that are net recipients of funds from the EU now, would end up putting in more than they received.
Poland, which receives generous subsidies now, would likely become a net contributor. Add to that, probably, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg. Poland will literally be paying for Ukraine to join the EU. So, in addition to Polish farmers protesting lower incomes and greater competition because of Ukraine, Polish people may also pay higher taxes.
That’s why there is much discussion in Europe about variable geometry, the idea that new countries can join Europe and integrate at a different, i.e. slower pace than existing members like Poland and France. This is simply code for kicking into the long grass the huge and disruptive reform to EU budgets that would be needed to give Ukraine the same benefits as long-standing members.
In August 2023, the Financial Times wrote a helpful piece that explains in simple terms the massive changes that Ukrainian membership would require internally within the EU. Ukraine has a much longer checklist of issues that it needs to address before it could join the EU, including vital work on justice reform and a more focussed effort to tackle corruption. It has already received upwards 118 billion euros in aid from the European Union. Ukrainian national debt has doubled since the war started and will pass 100% of GDP in 2025.
So, while I believe the wider political and economic benefits to Ukraine of EU membership are worth it, the road ahead will be fraught. Ukraine can’t progress with real purpose along that road while it chooses to prosecute a war against Russia that it will not be able to win decisively. And the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, at some distant point more than a decade in the future, may not, in fact, exist.
Let’s be clear, Poland has been one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine, in particular in housing more refugees than any other EU country, except for Germany. Yet Sikorski remarked somberly that Ukraine’s farms “are too good.” In truth, Poland has no more interest than France or other major recipients of subsidies to see Ukraine join the EU on the same terms as them.
In the pork barrel of EU budgetary politics, Poland might not be Ukraine’s best friend.
This article was published by Responsible Statecraft.
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