By Galyna Kostiukevych
Galyna Kostiukevych is Senior Lecturer in EU Law and Team Leader in the International and European Law Program, The Hague University of Applied Sciences
I was born in the Soviet Union right before its collapse. As I was only 1 year old when Ukraine became independent, I do not remember that ‘super state,’ though my birth certificate will always remind me of it. At the time of my birth, my parents could not even imagine that their daughter would get the opportunity to live abroad and do so in five different countries, four of them outside the boundaries of the then still existing Warsaw Pact, in what was then referred to as the ‘rotten, bourgeois, capitalist West.’
As a teenager, I became more interested and aware of the political situation in Europe and its implications for Ukraine. The year 2004, when I was 14, was full of important events and developments in the European Union as well as Ukraine. It was the year of the biggest EU enlargement, which included many countries that used to be in the ‘sphere of influence’ of the former USSR. The EU expanded and Ukraine became a country bordering the EU.
That same year, Ukraine was also undergoing a massive transformation with masses of people protesting the fraudulent results of the presidential elections. The events known as ‘The Orange Revolution’ became a crucial step for Ukraine on the path of developing a mature democratic culture. Ukrainian people expressed loud and clear their support for democratic values and transparent elections, as well as a desire to align themselves with Europe. Ukraine found itself at the crossroads and its people chose a democratic direction instead of the type of autocratic and anti-democratic regime that was common in many other post-Soviet countries, and which was, of course, championed by Russia, where Putin had already established his regime.
As a 14-year-old girl, I understood that Ukraine’s aspirations could be realized together with other European countries. I strongly hoped that one day Ukraine would also join the EU, like our neighbors Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary. For my generation, Europe became closer than for members of the previous generations.
As Ukraine began to share a border with the EU, this was no longer some far-away political entity: from now on, it became possible to literally walk there through a pedestrian border crossing.
It is also important to note that from 2004 onwards, Ukraine experienced quite significant economic growth which was felt by middle-class Ukrainians. This meant that more Ukrainians could afford trips abroad, including to the EU. In the summer of 2005, my family could afford to go on holidays abroad for the first time in my life. It was a milestone for me, as this first trip abroad made me fully realize how much I enjoyed exploring new countries. We travelled to Bulgaria by bus, crossing Romania on the way. At that point, these two countries were about to join the EU. What I saw during these holidays made me think that the prospects of Ukraine joining the EU one day should be quite realistic.
If our neighbors, who had also been in the ‘Soviet camp’ for decades, had managed to sufficiently improve their economic and political situation to become part of the club, why couldn’t we? I have never changed my mind since then.
In 2008, when I was 18, I had the chance to visit actual EU member states for the first time. It was a relatively short tourist trip to Czechia and Austria that also included visits to Dresden and Krakow. I was very curious to see what the recent EU member states Czechia and Poland looked like in comparison to Austria and Germany, longer-term EU member states. As a tourist, I did not perceive much difference between the older and newer EU member states in terms of transportation, roads, cleanliness, safety, and availability of food. Borderless travel also contributed to the feeling that these countries share more commonalities than differences and belong to the same space.
Besides the possibilities to discover the EU through such trips, my generation was the first in Ukraine who could benefit from a wide range of educational opportunities in the EU. In this regard, there is a significant generational difference between my sister, who is 14 years older, and myself: she did not have the same opportunities to attend summer schools and participate in exchange programs.
The new possibilities also gave those young Ukrainians the chance to study in the EU who are not children of oligarchs.
As a 21-year-old, while I was still a law student in Ukraine, I participated in an exchange program at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. I enjoyed living in a neighboring country for a year and experiencing life there. Krakow is a beautiful historic city which reminded me a lot of Lviv, where I was doing my bachelor and first master. In many ways I felt right at home there. I managed to find my ‘crowd’ very fast, with Polish friends and friends from other EU countries who came there thanks to the Erasmus exchange program. Due to the student mobility within the Union, student life felt much more diverse than back home in Ukraine.
My year in Krakow had a fundamental impact on my further life and career. I had already learned some basics of EU law in Ukraine, but in Krakow I decided to delve deeper into this field. The wide range of EU-related courses in Krakow made me very passionate about EU law. While learning about the Free Movement of Persons in class, I could also benefit from it in practice: thanks to borderless travel within the Schengen Area, I could effortlessly visit several other countries.
I continued to specialize in EU law by pursuing a Master’s Program at the College of Europe in Bruges. Since Belgium is the place where numerous European institutions are located, I truly felt that I was living in the place where it all was happening. It was also my first time living in Western Europe.
What struck me is how some of my West European peers perceived Eastern Europe. In their eyes, Poland was somehow not ‘the real Europe.’ Eastern Europe was still something fundamentally different from the rest of Europe, like the Ugly Duckling of Europe.
And Ukraine was not viewed as European at all, since these young EU-minded West Europeans seemed to take Europe as a synonym of the EU – anything outside of it did not truly belong to ‘Europe’ either.
Nevertheless, I still enjoyed working in an international environment and therefore wanted to pursue a PhD degree in a diverse, multinational university. This became a reality two years later, when I moved to the European University Institute in Florence, where most research revolves around Europe. The idyllic Tuscan hills were a great setting to meet young researchers from all over Europe and make friends for life.
In 2017, a stay in New York as a visiting scholar at Columbia Law School gave me the opportunity to experience life in a non-European country. There I realized that I had somehow felt at home quite easily in all European countries I had been living in so far, but in the US, I really felt far away, both literally and figuratively: I was a guest in a different world.
This made me think that despite the incredible diversity within Europe, certain European values unite us: there is something like a shared European cultural space.
In between my stays abroad, I had been back in Ukraine for a year in 2013-4, where I witnessed (and participated in) a historic event, another turning point for my country: Euromaidan. The protests started in November 2013, when President Yanukovych unexpectedly refused to sign the Association Treaty with the EU. Many Ukrainians, especially those belonging to younger generations, were disappointed by this turn of events and started protesting on Maidan, the main square in Kyiv. Police brutality against the protesters sparked widespread outrage and even bigger protests followed.
The feeling of standing in the immense crowds on Maidan was truly special: I would be part of something big and important, even though no one could possibly know what the outcome of the protests would be, or what risks we were taking. We demanded the dismissal of high-level officials responsible for the police brutality against protesting students. As Yanukovych refused to give in to those demands, the protests continued and became structural. In February 2014, special police forces had been given orders to stop the protests by any means, which meant firing at the crowds. In a couple of days’ time, the police murdered over 100 protesters.
This was the beginning of the end of Yanukovych’s tenure, as he realized that he had crossed a point of no return – the Ukrainian people would never accept him as their president anymore. He decided to flee to Russia.
The significance of Euromaidan cannot be overestimated: it showed that Ukrainians saw their future with Europe and would not accept an oppressive regime. For Russia, the outcome – a pro-Russian president fleeing the country and Ukrainian society aspiring to get closer to the EU – was completely unacceptable.
The attempts to quell the protests had failed in Ukraine, because Ukrainians proved to be less submissive to an oppressive authoritarian regime than Russians. Russia was anxious about its loss of control over Ukraine and sought a way to preserve its imperial domination. Therefore, it occupied Crimea and part of the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine.
Since then, Ukraine has paid an extremely high price for its desire to choose a different path from Russia: that of a truly independent country with democratic values.
Since 2020, I work as a senior lecturer in EU law and a team leader at the Hague University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. My interest and passion in the EU have led me here. Even though I am not an EU citizen, I am now teaching EU law to EU citizens (and some students like me as well). One of the courses I offer at the moment focuses on the law of external relations of the EU. Among other things, we cover the role of the EU in the international arena and the instruments it has to tackle various geopolitical challenges, including violations of international law. The current response of the EU and its member states to the Russo-Ukrainian war is also addressed.
I strongly hope that one day Ukraine will enter the EU. Ukraine’s rough, thorny path towards the EU is covered in blood, sweat and tears. Of course, EU membership is not a reward that will automatically be given because of the sufferings a country has gone through. To be accepted into the EU, a country should fulfill the so-called Copenhagen criteria. Ukraine will have to demonstrate that it has stable democratic institutions, a well-functioning market economy, and that it will take on the obligations and adhere to the aims of the political, economic, and monetary union.
The country has already made huge progress and continues to do so in the middle of a war with a strong enemy. Ukraine is defending democratic values in the ultimate way and its economy has demonstrated resilience during the war.
I hope that this will be taken into account during the negotiations for Ukraine’s EU membership; I am certainly eager to offer my expertise and knowledge to contribute to the process of Ukraine’s EU accession and to ensure that Ukraine becomes a strong and valuable member of the EU.
