Lowering the bar? - Compliance Negotiations and the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement

In 2014, the European Union (EU) and Ukraine signed an Association Agreement that aimed to bring Ukraine closer to the EU. On 24 February 2022, Russia began a full-scale war on Ukraine. Since then, Ukraine has become an EU candidate country and accession negotiations have started. The Association Agreement continues to be the basis of political and economic cooperation between the two partners. This project analysed how Ukraine and the EU put into effect the Association Agreement before and during the war. A deeper understanding of this process and its outcomes helps to further both the objectives of the Agreement and international cooperation more generally. A particular challenge of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement is that it contains a number of EU rules that Ukraine promised to introduce and enforce. Taking over these rules, however, is often expensive and requires far-reaching reforms. The punctual and complete adoption and application of the rules represents a major challenge for Ukraine. This interdisciplinary project combined political science and law perspectives to analyse how Ukraine and the EU dealt with this situation. On the one hand, it looked at whether and how the two partners adjusted the content of the original agreement and with what result. On the other hand, the project addressed the question as to what role the war and the process of Ukraine's accession to the EU play for the development of relations between the EU and Ukraine in general. The project results show that before the war, pre-emptive compliance negotiations and multi-stakeholder networks shaped the dynamics of compliance negotiations. This means that the EU and Ukraine adopted a forward-looking attitude towards Ukraine’s compliance, addressing potential challenges already long before the deadlines stated in the Association Agreement. The research also showed that informal networks with a problem-solving approach, sometimes including civil society actors, were important in the discussion of compliance issues. These key findings have added new insights to research on compliance negotiations and international treaties. In terms of the broader EU-Ukraine relations, the project explored the EU's response to Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine since February 2022 and the dynamics of the early stage of Ukraine's accession to the EU. It has shown that the deepened cooperation between the EU and Ukraine since the 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution contributed to the strength and promptness of the EU's initial response to Russia's full-scale invasion. The project has also uncovered that Ukraine’s relations with the EU have become closer despite the ongoing war and that reforms in the country have accelerated. Incentives provided by the EU, the necessity to cope with the effects of the war, and the will to break with the Soviet past have been identified as important drivers of change in Ukraine. Finally, the project has highlighted potential challenges with regard to the accession conditionality applied by the EU, which could contradict the goal of ownership by the Ukrainian people. The project was carried out with partners from the Ukrainian Catholic University, L’viv, the NGO "Environment-People-Law", L’viv, and the think tank "Foreign Policy Council 'Ukrainian Prism'", Kyiv. Joint work on academic and outreach publications and events has strengthened the research and dissemination capacity in Ukraine. At the same time, the cooperation with Ukrainian partners and conducting field research in the country have increased the expertise on Ukraine in Norway. This expertise was shared with the public and political decision-makers on various occasions.

The project has both an academic and societal impact. Academic impact: First, the project addressed less explored research questions on international treaty compliance and international norm promotion from both a political science and a law perspective. It has broadened the debate to include the topics of pre-emptive compliance negotiations and the role of multistakeholder networks in the dynamics of compliance negotiations in the EU’s external relations and more generally. Second, in terms of the broader EU-Ukraine relations, the project explored the EU's response to Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine since February 2022 and the dynamics of the early stage of Ukraine's accession process to the EU. It has shown that the path-dependent dynamics of EU–Ukraine cooperation and the EU's socialization with Ukraine since the 2013-14 Euromaidan Revolution contributed to the strength and promptness of the EU's response to Russia's full-scale invasion. The edited volume published by the project team on Ukraine's path to EU membership in turn stresses the ever-closer relationships between the partners, Ukraine's accelerated reforms, the effect of various compliance mechanisms, and the continuing relevance of the Association Agreement for the accession process. The project also focused on the EU’s use of conditionality towards Ukraine during wartime. Finally, it shed light on the normative content of the EU's Eastern Partnership. Societal impact: Cooperation within the project has strengthened research capacity in Ukraine through the close involvement of the project partners in the work on the edited volume, international conferences and workshops, joint webinars, and dissemination activities. The webinars were open to the public and conveyed knowledge on i) internationalising business, with a particular view on harnessing the Norwegian experience with the European Economic Area for Ukrainian companies, and ii) academic publishing. The dissemination activities included a one-day hybrid Policy Dialogue at the Ukrainian Catholic University on the topic of "Ukraine’s Thorny Path to the European Union: Sectoral Insights and Future Prospects" and a hybrid panel discussion on "Ukraine-Nordic Research Cooperation During the War: Perspectives from Universities and Think Tanks". Both were open to the public. Several project-related op-eds, blog posts and popular science presentations have contributed to making academic knowledge accessible to policy makers and the public in Norway, Ukraine, and beyond. This knowledge will be essential in the future, for example with a view to Norway’s support to Ukraine through the Nansen Support Programme. Finally, the project partners have discussed opportunities for future cooperation.

When states enter into international treaties, they often take on obligations. Some states, however, face massive challenges to meet their contractual duties. While this could result in plain non-compliance, the concerned states may also enter into compliance negotiations with the other parties of the treaty or the international institution supervising treaty implementation in order to lower their compliance obligations and achieve 'negotiated compliance'. This interdisciplinary project combines political science and law perspectives to study these hitherto largely ignored post-agreement negotiations. Focusing on the European Union – Ukraine 2014 Association Agreement (AA), the project aims to map and explain the occurrence and unfolding of compliance negotiations between the parties to the treaty and their results. By concluding the AA, Ukraine took on comprehensive and binding responsibilities for domestic reform. At the same time, the country struggles to live up to its promises and first informal adjustments of the Agreement are taking place. In Work Package 1, the project provides an in-depth, objective legal assessment of Ukrainian laws' correspondence with treaty obligations and analyses the EU's reactions to cases of non-conformity with regard to rule adoption. Accounting for potential "dead letters", Work Package 2 draws attention to compliance with a view to rule application. The project examines various hypotheses regarding both the occurrence and results of compliance negotiations in six case studies on public procurement, trade in services, competition, energy, transport and judicial reform. The project results will have both an academic and societal impact. They will advance theoretical and empirical knowledge on compliance negotiations. At the same time, they will help to improve treaty compliance, which often entails better living conditions for a state's population.