Europeanisation and Its Impact on Candidate Countries for EU Membership: A View from Ukraine

Abstract

Background: The nature of the European Union (EU) as a global actor has long been the subject of diverse academic debates. Proponents of an understanding of the EU as a normative force believe that its greatest transformative power lies not in coercion but in a policy of enlargement that allows the EU to stimulate reforms in the candidate countries of the Central and Eastern European region, despite the crisis of enlargement. The aim of the article is to study the impact of the Europeanisation process on the legal systems of member states and candidate countries, in particular Ukraine, as well as the formulation of proposals for national institutions regarding the perception of the ‘Europeanisation’ impact of EU law on the legal system of Ukraine. Methods: The methodological basis of the work is interdisciplinary and comprehensive approaches. The interdisciplinary approach is based on the application of theoretical developments in jurisprudence, philosophy, political science, and the theory of international relations, which make it possible to study the process of Europeanisation in relation to member states and candidate countries as fully and comprehensively as possible. The comprehensive approach is aimed at identifying the multifaceted and multifactorial ontological determinants of the Europeanisation process of legal systems. These approaches determined the choice of appropriate general theoretical and special scientific methods: hermeneutic, dialectical, analysis, synthesis, etc. Results and Conclusions: As a result of the study of the political will, capacity, and legitimacy of the EU to defend the values proclaimed in the founding treaties, in cases of violations of the regulations of the EU law by the member states, the authors come to the conclusion that the EU may face negative consequences due to the display of democratic reformist coalitions in individual member states (Poland and Hungary ), as well as due to favouring (authoritarian) stability over uncertain (democratic) change. Concession to candidate countries for EU accession in terms of the fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria in exchange for satisfying the interests of leading member states may undermine the credibility of the project of building a European identity based on the common values of the EU, as well as the loss of the reputation of the normative power of the European Union. Accelerating the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU, which is connected with Ukraine’s acquisition of the status of a candidate for accession to the EU, requires the Europeanisation of the domestic legal culture as a prerequisite for the modernisation of all other elements of the legal system. This, in turn, implies the completion of the process of de-Russification of legal science and education, the development and approval of the Legal Education Development Program, and the modernisation of legal terminology.