Ukraine mooted as model for Brexit

The association agreement between the EU and Ukraine offers a template for the UK's future relationship with Europe, academics have said.

Ukraine’s EU association agreement offers “a very clear structure for the content of negotiations” between the UK and the EU, said Michael Emerson, a researcher at the Brussels-based EU affairs think tank CEPS, on 8 November. He was addressing the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs at a session on the consequences of the UK’s decision to leave the EU.

The agreement, finalised in 2014, includes the establishment of a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area between the EU and Ukraine—in place since since January. The DCFTA includes a “high degree of single market inclusion” for three of the EU’s so-called ‘four freedoms’, Emerson said: the free movement of goods, services and capital, but not of labour.