EU-UA-AA.md

Dear Netherlanders,

On April 6 (coming Wednesday) you will decide on the future of the Association Agreement (AA) between EU and Ukraine.

As you probably know (despite my confusing name for you ;)) I am Ukrainian who lives in the Netherlands.

There are all sorts of misleadings about the agreement are spreading around recently. Unfortunately many people tend to accept them. Thus many people will vote based on the reasons that have hardly something to do with the actual matter.

To make a conscious choice it is important to know what Association Agreement really means for both parties.

Here are my findings and thoughts about this.

This agreement is not about joining the EU, not about providing massive financial support to Ukraine, not about opening the EU to Ukrainian workers or migrants. EU has already the same agreements with over 25 countries around the world. I do not see how the AA could make our relations with Russia any worse. They must become only better with time.

The Association Agreement is an agreement about cooperation. It includes win-win free trade agreement. Ukraine commits to adopt a number of European norms and standards, strengthen rule of law, tackle corruption, participate in combating cross-border crime, terrorism and improve situation with human rights and intellectual property in the country. The Association Agreement will open more opportunities for European/Dutch business in Ukraine and protect their investments inside the country.

The AA has special meaning for Ukrainians. We paid an enormous price for it already. "Suspension" of the AA by the government brought people to the streets. That's how Euromaidan started. Ukrainian people made their choice to have these painful but so essential changes and they are on their way towards changing the country for the better. The Association Agreement will help them in this. On April 6 that is your chance to support them.

I encourage you to make your own investigation on the subject. Reading short official information about AA or even wikipedia article could be sufficient to see better the real picture.

Please be reasonable and come to vote!

FYI There is a possibility to vote without coming to the polling place personally. See your local municipality website for more information.

Thank you for your consideration!

Kind regards,

Ruslan Forostianov

Dear Ruslan Forostianov,

I'd like to straighten some of your plea:

This agreement is not about joining the EU, not about providing massive financial support to Ukraine, not about opening the EU to Ukrainian workers or migrants.

• The agreement is not about joining the EU, is is however about creating the conditions to be able to join the EU. So indirectly, it definitely is about joining the EU. The Universities of Gent of Kyiv have even concluded, I quote: The Association Agreement belongs to the selected group of “integration-oriented agreements”, i.e. agreements including principles, concepts and provisions of EU law which are to be interpreted and applied as if the third State (=Ukraine) is part of the EU. This means, one way or the other, the agreement is about joining the EU on the long term.
• The agreement is about massive financial support: 40 billion in "international asssistence" (http://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-to-receive-40-billion-in-international-assistance-imf-says-1423730531), 15 billion written off debt (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-27/ukraine-s-debt-deal-is-a-draw), billions in subsidy and more. In total at least 93 billion euro's!
• The agreement is about opening the EU to Ukrainian workers/migrants. And history has shown what happens: For instance the UK has been flooded by polish workers three times harder than the worst calculations predicted. As these polish workers need a lot less money to support their families, they tend to accept lower wages. This means that the native European population will become too expensive for their job, leading to more unemployment in western Europe.
  According to http://nos.nl/artikel/2096238-oekraiense-onderzoekers-verdrag-niet-goed-voor-oekraine.html, a quarter of the Ukrainian workforce works abroad. The association agreement will increase this percentage. In the mean time, people that stay in Ukraine will get all the worthless jobs.

Ukraine commits to adopt a number of European norms and standards, strengthen rule of law, tackle corruption, participate in combating cross-border crime, terrorism and improve situation with human rights and intellectual property in the country.
This makes it a political agreement by definition. The fact that you, and most politicions feel they need to lie about the nature of the agreement is reason enough not to trust it.

The Association Agreement will open more opportunities for European/Dutch business in Ukraine and protect their investments inside the country.

• The Dutch government is giving a negative travel advice for most of Ukraine. How can you do real business if you cannot go there?
• Even if you manage to start a business in Ukraine, the Ukrainian minister of finance warns that your company can be raided every single day, "reiderstvo" as it is called. Google it!

I understand that the agreement is good for the Ukrainian people. Free money. But for the European population, this agreement is another disaster. We've been screwed by having to bail out Greece several times. We have been screwed by the agreement with turkey lately, where we end up paying billions but in the end don't get less migrants (only different migrants). We're sick of it.

Kind regards,

The Netherlanders.

One more thing, that has just surfaced: The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, who is supposed to fight corruption, has just been caught as player in the largest tax fraud world wide: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/716713216097787904

@Dutchie0404

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have seen your comment just now when the result of the referendum is known.

I am not specialist in this area (as not many voters were), but I could say that your considerations are not free from confusions. Here are some of them: International Monetary Fund (IMF) operations vs European Union Association Agreement, Visa Free Regime for visitors vs Work Permit.

I might have been mistaken in some positions but at least I am speaking from my name. I have not created anonymous account and signed the message on behalf of all the people.
Luckily you could not speak from the name of all Netherlanders even when you collected all common "arguments" of No camp.

I could understand reasons of your annoyances and fears, but I don't think you would address them by rejecting the Association Agreement between EU and Ukraine.

Anyhow only time will tell.

I wish you all the best,
Ruslan Forostianov