ABSTRACT
Shortly after the Copenhagen Summit of 1993, the German foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, announced a comprehensive programme for a European Union (EU) Ostpolitik and pledged to promote it during Germany’s presidency of the Union, which started on 1 July 1994. Such an Ostpolitik was not confined to Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Bulgaria, that is, countries with which the EU had already signed cooperation agreements, but included Ukraine, Russia and other states to the east of the EU. Kinkel stressed, in particular, the importance of bringing Ukraine quickly within the European cooperation system to ease the severity of its economic crisis and to diffuse tensions between Kiev and Moscow, two developments that threatened to affect the EU adversely. Shortly thereafter, the Community took the first concrete steps towards a comprehensive Ostpolitik by signing economic cooperation agreements with countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus.
