Francis Wurtz, Chairman of the Group United European Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL), in the European Parliament in the EP Plenary Session on 1 December, 2004


Mister President,
The events unfolding in Kiev during the last ten days  or so are good news for democracy. Overcoming fatalism  and fear, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens are demonstrating, with a calm determination, their demand  for change. They have gradually imposed a certain respect  for their movement amongst a large section of the Ukrainian  Parliament, the army, the media and apparently the Supreme  Court itself.

This shake-up is due to the fact that the Koutchma system  has, over the years, led to the growth of an ever-broader  opposition in which can now be found tendencies with very  different ideas regarding the future of their country.  The regime´s drift into authoritarianism was, in  fact, already set in motion during the period in which  the Prime Minister was called Iouchtchenko rather than  Yanoukovitch. Yet despite this, for a long time the leaders  of Europe, and more generally of the west, have treated the Ukrainian president as an ally. For his part, Président  Bush, just last year, apparently demonstrated his confidence  in the existing power's willingness to defend, at his side,  democracy in the Middle East, saluting Mr Koutchma's decision  to send troops to Iraq. All of these elements should lead  us to take a somewhat measured view of certain professions of the democratic faith, at the same time avoiding simplistic  and Manichean visions of Ukrainian political realities.

The big challenge at the present time appears to me to  be the need somehow to succeed in ensuring that what is  in itself good news for democracy is not transformed into  a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, provoking if not the  partition of the country, at least the awakening of nationalisms  and the resurgence of ethnic divides going back to the  time of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires.

I find it, in this respect, somewhat archaic, one might  indeed say irresponsible, to present the Ukrainian crisis  as a sort of arm-wrestling match between "the West" and  Russia, a European variant of the struggle of good against  evil. The history of the Ukraine being as it is, such an  approach can only exacerbate the division between the country's two principle parties. This would do nothing to address  the interests of the Ukrainian people, least of all those  of the western region, extremely dependent as they have  become on the rest of the country since the collapse of  cross-border trade with the entry of their neighbours into  the European Union. Neither would it be in the interests  of the EU itself.

As much as we are justified in encouraging, by our mediation,  a democratic dynamic in the Ukraine, we have a great deal  to lose through the destabilisation of this economically  and politically fragile region. Let´s leave to Paul  Wolfowitz the imperial vision of Europe expressed in his declaration that "The objective of a Europe entire  and free will not be attained unless the Ukraine becomes  a full member of the European Union and until she is fully  integrated into NATO."

It would be best, for our part, if we were to refrain  from exerting this kind of pressure. As soon as new elections,  hopefully conducted in full transparency, have determined  the legitimate representative of the country, the moment  will arrive when we must engage both the authorities and  the broader society itself in a calm political dialogue,  one which does not put the new relationship with the Union  in opposition to the country's special relationship with  Russia, but which, on the contrary, sets out to open a  perspective which the Ukrainian people, in all their diversity,  can feel is right for them. Here, once more, is a serious  test of our ability to put in place a common foreign policy  worthy of the name.