“Take your subsidies and give us the market”: expert assesses how to negotiate accelerated EU accession

Security expert Ihor Popov explained that Europe is not very eager to go to war, and Ukraine will not defend it forever for free, so there is room for bargaining on European integration, Politeka reports.

He said this in the program “Personality with Serhii Doiko.”

“After World War II, Europeans created a beautiful blooming garden where everything is fine, where there is Netflix, PlayStation, excellent football matches. So why fight? There are so many good things. When Europeans are told that they need to go sit in trenches and fight, they say: ‘No, no, no.’ When you ask Europeans from one of the Scandinavian countries what they would do if they were attacked, they say they would run to a neighboring country; if that is attacked, then they would fly by plane across the ocean. Most Western societies are not ready to fight, kill, and die,” Ihor Popov explains.

And if Europeans believe, the guest of the program argues, that Ukraine will defend them, that Ukrainian soldiers will stand along the borders with Russia and Belarus, in the Baltic states and Poland, then they should stop pressuring Ukraine on EU integration, give it a faster path to membership, with a voice and access to funds and markets.

“Deputy Prime Minister Kachka held consultations with our farmers, and they say: ‘Take your subsidies and give us the market. We work so well and efficiently that we are ready.’ So Ukraine joins the EU, and we don’t need to receive an extra €2,000 per cow. No, we would be happy, but that is definitely impossible. It would be better for us to voluntarily give it up and trade it for accelerated accession and access to markets,” Ihor Popov says.

As he explains, the major enlargement of the EU began after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, when Western Europe cut defense spending by half, closed military factories, and therefore had a lot of money to invest in Eastern European countries and accept them. But now the EU has a budget deficit and no resources to help Ukraine align all standards. Therefore, the expert concludes, at a minimum urgent issues need to be addressed, such as problems at the border with Poland, access to markets, and similar matters, and then the Armed Forces of Ukraine can play a role in Europe’s security.

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