Constitutional Perspective of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement Application: Ukrainian Problems – European Remedies
Constitutional Perspective of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement Application: Ukrainian Problems – European Remedies

Summary/Abstract: The political importance of the EU–Ukraine association agreement – to say its vital existential role for the future of Ukraine and the dramatic event surrounding its conclusion overshadowed the pure legal aspects of its implementation. However, the commencement of its provisional ap¬plication brings legal aspects to the front. At the current state, there is a gap between the Ukrainian constitutional order and the ultimate obliga¬tion of Ukraine to implement the binding decision of the supranational institutions established under the Agreement (Association Council and Committee). The successful experience of the countries of Central and Eastern Eu¬rope, which had the similar problems, shows possible solutions to the problem. Particularly, in Slovakia and Poland it was a constitutional re¬form with the introduction to the Constitution of separate articles legitimizing the status of documents, adopted by international organization, certainly including the Association Agreement institutions and later the European Union itself. This development created important legal prerequisites for further European integration of the countries, which ended up with full-scale EU membership. Moreover, the general trend of consolidating the principles of suprem¬acy and direct applicability of the EU law at the level of national constitutional acts of member-states reflects the specific features of the EU law application as well as its inter-connection and interdependence with the national legal systems. Therefore at the level of its constitution Ukraine has to accept the specific role of the EU law as a sui generis legal system. At the current stage the focus is certainly on the implementation of the Association institutions’ decisions, however, in a longer perspective there is a distinct need for the constitutional consolidation of principles governing the inter-relations of the EU law and national law of the member-states i.e. the principles of direct applicability and the supremacy. It is necessary to emphasize that despite the fact that EU law is not binding for Ukraine at this moment, it is important to use it at least as the 60 Ibidem. M. Oleksandr, S. Volodymyr, Constitutional Perspective... interpretive tool for the application of the national legislation due to the legislatively set goal of European integration. In this way the Ukrainian legal system will get rid of the limits, preventing it from exposition to the EU legal system, contributing to its independent development towards the standards already existing in the European Union. From this perspective the overcome of the mentioned constitutional gap is of critical importance for the creation of adequate procedures of the practical implementation of the Association Agreement.

• Details
• Contents