Trade liberalization meets resource nationalism. The case of EU-Ukraine relations

Our paper studies what happens when EU free trade liberalization agenda meets domestic resistance. While few countries have actually sought to keep or introduce protectionist measures while seeking to close association deals with the EU, EU-Ukraine relations offer two cases – the moratoria prohibiting the sale of agricultural land and the export of timber – which became the target of EU pressure and increasingly also of growing domestic contestation by coalitions of domestic and international actors. On the one hand, these two cases demonstrate the EU’s role in promoting the market access of EU economic actors. On the other hand, they come with problematic normative implications as the EU seeks involvement in particularly sensitive areas. EU actions does not only liberalize market access, but also encourage the commodification of land and forests. These are areas that moratoria defenders see as unalienable environmental or (exhaustible) natural resources; consequently, defenders used issue linkage to form counter-coalitions connecting the protection of local business to sustainable development and environmental concerns. Particularly problematic about the EU’s agency is that liberalizing, pro-EU coalitions predominantly frame moratoria and counter-coalitions as instances of oligarchic “vested interests” and local state weakness. In contrast, we argue export moratoria can be well-suited for such weak states, as they can more easily be monitored by civil society groups. Furthermore, our analysis of the counter-coalition highlights several factors that explain their success and point to conditions affecting the dynamics surrounding trade arrangements.