The New Generation of Association Agreements in the Eastern Partnership: A New Model of EU Integration without Membership?

In the framework of the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the EU envisages to conclude a new generation of Association Agreements with its Eastern neigbours. These agreements have the objective to establish, inter alia, “gradual integration in the EU Internal Market” by setting up a “deep and comprehensive free trade area”(DCFTA). At the heart of these DCFTAs lays the principle of market access conditionality according to which access to the EU Internal Market will only be granted if the partner country approximates its domestic legislation to a selected body of EU acquis. Therefore, these envisaged Association Agreements can be categorized as ‘integration agreements’. These are agreements which (partially) integrate a third country in the EU Internal Market under the condition of legislative approximation. It is the objective of this paper to analyse how and to which extent these new DCFTAs will integrate the EaP partners in the EU Internal Market.

First, the concept of ‘integration agreements’ and the integration objectives of the EaP will be clarified. Then, the DCFTA market access conditionality will be explored by focusing on four areas of the EU-Ukraine DCFTA (i.e. (i) Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, (ii) Technical Barriers to Trade, (iii) Services and (iv) Public Procurement). Finally, the market access conditionality mechanisms of the EU-Ukraine DCFTA will be compared with other existing integration agreements. It will be argued that, although the DCFTAs contain innovate legal instruments to integrate a third country in the EU Internal Market, they fall short as a model of EU integration without membership.