The recent pardon of former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, imprisoned for political reasons in the West’s opinion, improved the mood in the European parliament.
It allowed the European Union’s special envoys to present a positive report on Ukraine on April 18.
Consequently, the mission was extended to September in hopes that its work will boost the chances for signing an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union in November.
Former European Parliament President Pat Cox and former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski led the mission credited with the release of Lutsenko from prison, after he served more than half of his four-year term for an abuse-of-office case seen as politically motivated.
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, praised the mission as an “enormous” and “symbolic” success and suggested its work should be reinforced by creating a greater “political frame” to achieve the reversal of political prosecutions, progress in judicial reform and changes in electoral law. The details of his proposals, however, have yet to emerge.
Cox and Kwasniewski started monitoring court proceedings involving former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in June 2012. Their mandate was later expanded to include monitoring Lutsenko and former Acting Defense Minister Valeriy Ivashchenko.
Their report will affect the final decision in European capitals on whether to sign a comprehensive political and trade association agreement with Ukraine this fall. The signing is conditional on progress in many areas, including improvements in the election and judicial systems
“There is still no consensus (about signing). However, there is a change towards a positive expectation compared to a month ago,” Jacek Protasiewicz, vice president of the European Parliament told the Kyiv Post after the closed-door hearing on the mission’s report.
The two envoys visited Ukraine 14 times in less than 11 months, spending some 40 working days in the nation, most of them in high-level meetings, Cox said. They had 14 meetings with Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, eight with President Viktor Yanukovych and seven with the jailed Tymoshenko, who remains the central focus of the mission.
“All doors that we’ve sought to open, have been opened for us. All files that we’ve asked to consult, have been opened for us. All prison doors or detention centers that we have asked to visit, have been opened for us,” Cox told a press briefing in Strasbourg, France.
Kwasniewski, however, noted he did not expect the mission to achieve Tymoshenko’s release. She is serving seven years for abuse of office, a charge viewed as politically motivated.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on April 17 that Tymoshenko’s case is crucial for signing the Association sgreement this year. “If the Yulia Tymoshenko case is not settled, the Association sgreement cannot be signed,” she said, adding this was but one of many expectations.
Ukrainian media reported that Yanukovych received 100 pleas to pardon Tymoshenko. The latest came from five female members of parliament on April 18, including Lutsenko’s wife Iryna, her Batkivshchyna Party site reported.
Yanukovych has repeatedly said he would examine her case once she has exhausted all court options, which could last for months, if not years. In January, Tymoshenko was accused of commissioning a brutal murder in 1996 and the lowest court in Kyiv is currently examining the case.
But in the last six months, Cox and Kwasniewski’s work was concentrated on getting Lutsenko out of jail, a task deemed as more realistic. In his statement announcing his pardon, Yanukovych credited the mission’s work.
Until Lutsenko’s pardon and release on April 7, the ongoing joke was that the biggest achievement of the Cox-Kwasniewski mission was that they managed to move Tymoshenko from the shower to the bedroom of her hospital room.
Despite her painful back condition, Tymoshenko lived in the shower room for weeks, protesting against 24-hour surveillance in the rest of her living quarters. Surveillance ended when Yanukovych criticized it publicly on Feb.22.
Kwasniewski said Ukraine has been sending encouraging signals lately in several areas.
Among other things, he praised the new criminal procedural code, which came into effect this year. “After introducing the new criminal procedural code, the number of pre-trial detentions decreased by 35 percent, which means that 11,000 people are not arrested, and 11,000 families are not devastated by these old rules,” he said.
At the same time, Ukraine’s parliament, which was blocked for weeks, approved a number of laws that will help liberalize the visa-free regime by a consensus vote of the majority and the opposition.
Kwasniewski said parliament will have to work hard if the “historical goal” is to be achieved for Ukraine. “Today, the most important thing is to approve the laws that will open Ukraine to association with the EU,” he said.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]
