It is a salutory reminder to those of us in the “old” jaded Europe, the home these days of some pretty virulent Euroscepticism, that there are plenty of people still out there who badly want to join this maligned club.
The mass protests in Kiev at the weekend against the Ukrainian government's decision to snub the EU in favour of Russia involved up to 100,000 people, the largest popular outpouring in the country since the 2004 Orange Revolution. It may not be to much of old Europe, but the EU still remains, let us not forget, a beacon of freedom and economic hope to much of eastern Europe.
At issue was the postponing by President Viktor Yanukovich of a draft association accord, the fruit of years of talks with the EU, expected to be signed at tomorrow's European Partnership summit in Vilnius. Mr Yanukovich has put off the signing, promising that it is for another day. Instead he will be talking to Russia about its customs union, which President Vladimir Putin has been urging on him to the horror of the 45 per cent of Ukrainians that polls show instead want closer links with the EU.
Ukraine's decision is a significant geostrategic victory for Mr Putin who also persuaded the country in 2008 not to sign up to Nato. It pulls Ukraine firmly back into the Russian orbit and looks very much like Russian bullying has given it a de facto veto on further EU integration to the east. It seriously undermines the EU's European Partnership programme of assistance to six of its ex-Soviet neighbouring states and, not least, the summit tomorrow in Vilnius .
Internally the move is unfortunately likely to ease pressures for democratic and political reform – notably the release of former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko, held ostensibly on corruption charges but believed by many to be a political prisoner.
The setback is just the latest blip in the stop-start evolution of EU enlargement and of the more general European integration story whose course we trace in a supplement today, from the days of the Roman empire, through Charlemagne, to the modern day. For some member states, and many Ukrainians, the country’s association accord was to be the first step to membership. For others it was precisely a means of holding that off, though helping to create a stable buffer to the east of the EU.
A degree of enlargement fatigue has set in following the expansion of the EU to central and eastern Europe. In part it’s about different definitions of what is meant by the union culturally and politically – does that encompass, for example, a predominantly Islamic state like Turkey? – and, in part, about a fear of enlargement bringing in countries whose level of economic development would put strains on the union’s cohesiveness. For some it’s as simple as “Europe is already too large”. Ukraine is at the testing point of such debates.