WASHINGTON, September 25 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova - Pursuing an association agreement with Ukraine but taking the possibility of the country's EU membership off the table was a mistake as the EU offered something it could not do, Jeffrey Anderson, an expert in European politics, told RIA Novosti Thursday.
"European Union was misguided in its idea that it could offer a country like Ukraine economic cooperation but not at the same time the prospect of EU membership… I think they offered something to Ukraine that they could not deliver, and that was their mistake," Anderson, Graf Goltz Professor & Director of the BMW Center for German and European Studies, Georgetown University, said.
By taking Ukraine's membership off the table back in 2008, the European Union virtually guaranteed that reform processes within Ukraine would be unsuccesful, according to the expert.
"They should not have pursued association agreement at that point not just because of Russia's concerns, but because it is very unlikely that a country like Ukraine will undertake the necessary reforms if there isn't a prospect of membership," Anderson explained.
During the EU-Ukraine Summit in Paris in 2008 Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg opposed any explicit wording of a European perspective on Ukraine thus refusing to allow the country on the path to join the bloc.
The Ukraine-EU Association Agreement is a treaty that presupposes a political and economic association between the parties.
The political provisions of the agreement between Ukraine and the European Union were signed back in March, after President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and the interim government came to power.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the economic part of the agreement in June.
Moscow has repeatedly stated that the implementation of the agreement carries economic risks for Russian-Ukrainian relations.
