CONTOURS OF UKRAINE’S EUROPEAN INTEGRATION THROUGH THE PRISM OF UKRAINIAN-ROMANIAN RELATIONS

Abstract

Today Romania is a significant ally of Ukraine and a champion of its economic, political, military and social interests within the European Union. The aim of this article is to examine the political transformation processes in both countries over the last thirty years, when, following the collapse of the socialist regimes in Europe and the Soviet regime in the socialist republics of the USSR, Ukraine and Romania emerged with a heavy historical, cultural and political legacy, including territorial, economic and ideological claims against one another. Each country, in the early 1990s, envisaged the establishment of justice in its own way. The success of the political dialogue between the two countries lay in its being enriched with constructive proposals from both sides, which led Ukraine’s democratic political circles (not without the help of European Union initiatives) to reshape relations from merely good-neighbourly ties to the point where Ukraine came to view Romania as a strategic partner and a future investor, primarily in the southern region of Ukraine, as laid out in policy documents dating back to the mid- and late 2000s. In conclusion, we note that during this specific period, concrete practical results have already been achieved in the economic, political, military and social spheres, which in the future may lead, provided the war ends and peace is restored in Ukraine, to deeper relations between the two countries and Ukraine’s further European integration, with Romania’s assistance, into the great European family of nations, where our country will take its rightful place.