Oekraïne speelt grotere rol in EU-beleid Moldavië en Transnistrië (en)

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Ukrainian cooperation with the breakaway Moldovan province of Transniestria risks damaging EU policy in Moldova, with the EU's new Ukraine-Moldova border mission having little impact so far.

Kiev has agreed to help Brussels press for Moldovan reunification by refusing to take Transniestrian steel exports after 25 January unless they carry official Moldovan customs stamps.

But reports from the EU's new Moldova-Ukraine border mission indicate that Ukraine is not living up to its promise, with illicit Transniestrian steel continuing to flow across the border despite last week's deadline.

"We should clarify what is the situation, why they don't have the stamps," the EU mission's operations chief Antti Hartikainen told EUobserver. "The Ukrainains are saying the Moldovans have made the registration system too difficult."

On top of this, Kiev has declined unofficial EU requests to get on board with a 2003 EU visa ban on the Transiestrian government, with a Ukrainian diplomat saying "We have rather different relations with Transniestria. It's not on the agenda."

EU border mission chief Mr Hartikainen confirmed that fleets of cars carrying Transniestrian leader Igor Smirnov cross into Ukraine "quite often," the last time on 24 January.

The Ukraine-based EU mission opened in November and works with Moldovan and Ukrainian officials in the field, advising which containers to search or how to access Europol data, but has no mandate for direct action.

Its 55 officers are not allowed to communicate with Transniestrian border guards, with Mr Hartikainen saying he has watched Transiestrian guards standing on the other side of the frontier in silence.

Dangerous phenomenon

Transniestria split from Moldova with Russian support in 1991 but is not recognised by either Brussels or Chisinau in what has become a so-called frozen conflict on the EU's doorstep.

The province houses Russian soldiers and arms dumps and has a reputation for smuggling people and guns into central Europe, with justice commissioner Franco Frattini calling the black market "a really dangerous phenomenon" after meeting Moldovan foreign minister Andrei Stratan in Brussels on Tuesday (31 January).

Mr Frattini said the EU treats Moldova as a "special partner" on the same level as Ukraine in neighborhood policy terms, with talks under way to establish EU-sponsored regional refugee centres in the two countries as well as to relax EU visa rules for Moldovan travelers.

Moldova will have a direct border with the EU after Romania joins the union in 2007 and has begun linking its energy grid to the Western Balkans in the hope of joining the EU one day.

But the Centre for European Policy Studies' (CEPS) Moldova expert, Nicu Popescu, explained that Ukraine's soft support of the Transniestrian economy could help preserve the frozen conflict and hold back EU integration moves.

He said Kiev's policy is linked to president Viktor Yushchenko's concern that Ukraine's Odessa and Vinnytsya regions, which trade heavily with the breakaway region, could turn against him in the 26 March elections.

On top of this, Transniestria's largest steel mill, the Rybitsa plant, is reportedly owned by senior political players in Ukraine and Russia: Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma; Petro Poroshenko, Mr Yushchenko's former defence minister and former Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

In Russia, some military commanders see the Transniestrian conflict as a strategic tool against further western expansion into the former Soviet bloc, Mr Popescu added.

"For Ukraine to really cooperate with the EU, it would have to pay a political price," he said. "Transniestria is more important than it seems on the map."

Transniestria for sale

The CEPS analyst suggested that the best way to achieve Moldovan reunification is to dangle the prospect of European legitimacy and market access to the Russian, Moldovan and Ukrainian "business clans" active in Transniestria.

"They want to legitimise their money, to travel in Europe. They want to go skiing in the Alps. They have the money to do this but they can't go," Mr Popescu indicated.

He said that Russian businessmen are a more influential class in Transniestria than the small group of genuine nationalists, while other regional problems, such as the frozen conflict in Georgia's Abkhazia province, are much higher up the Kremlin's foreign policy agenda than Moldova.

"Russia would sell Transniestria, once it gets the right offer," the analyst stated.