Knocking on the EU's door: the political economy of EU-Ukraine relations

The EU has recently launched the European Neighbourhood Policy, aimed at fostering integration with countries located close to its borders. This article proposes a liberal intergovernmentalist framework for the analysis of Ukraine's prospects of integration with the EU and apply it to evaluate the main economic and political benefits and costs associated to three possible scenarios: free trade area, fully developed European Neighbourhood Policy and EU accession. Two main conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, gains from integration would be asymmetrically distributed and would mostly accrue to Ukraine, whilst the main obstacles to integration would not be economic, but political. Secondly, the European Neighbourhood Policy does not represent a credible long-term alternative to EU membership for Ukraine; thus the outcome of the integration process should probably consist either in the mere creation of a free trade area or in EU accession.