What The EU Understands As “Rule Of Law”

October 11, 2011

This is embarrassing for anyone who, like me, would like to see a real European Union.

Tymoshenko Sentenced to Jail Despite EU Warnings

Prior to the verdict in the trial against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the European Union made it clear that there would be consequences should she be found guilty and jailed.

But in a ruling announced on Tuesday morning, Judge Rodion Kireyev said that Tymoshenko abused her position as head of government and "used her powers for criminal ends." The verdict? Guilty. She was sentenced to seven years in prison, just as state prosecutors had requested.

Isn't intervening in a a running legal case before the court has found a judgement against the rule of law?

In mid-September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up the Tymoshenko case with Yanukovych and told him that EU assistance depended on Ukraine's commitment to democracy. And a group of European politicians likewise expressed their concern during a September meeting in Yalta. "I hope we brought to (Yanukovych) very clearly the message that the rule of law is of critical importance," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said following the meeting.

Indeed, many observers felt that an adjournment of the trial late last month was called in order to give Yanukovych more time to consider the possible repercussions of a guilty verdict. The president, for his part, has insisted he has no influence over the court.

Which is of course as it should be. The "rule of law" calls for independent courts and the EU attempts to press the president of the Ukraine to interfere in the court procedures only shows that the EU has no interest in following those rules.

Tymoshenko made billions through gas deals. Does anyone believe that money was made in a just and legal way?

Posted by b on October 11, 2011 at 17:34 UTC | Permalink

Comments

What goes around.. eventually comes around.. goes for EU and its promotion of democracy!!!
does this sound promising b??
http://www.voltairenet.org/Does-Germany-s-fight-against

Posted by: Rd. | Oct 11 2011 18:49 utc | 1

b:
I haven’t heard much about Tymoshenko made billions through gas deals.
Can you inform us?
Is she worse than other Ukrainian leaders?

Posted by: alexno | Oct 11 2011 19:20 utc | 2

The EU position on Tymoshenko is just another instance of corrupt politicians protecting their own…their view is that the rule of law should apply to everyone but them.
Jacques Chirac’s ever postponed trial for corruption is a case in point: http://www.economist.com/node/18333113

Posted by: JohnH | Oct 11 2011 19:32 utc | 3

is reuters respectable enough for you Alexno?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/08/us-ukraine-election-tymoshenko-idUSTRE61714020100208
“She has repeatedly lashed out against corruption in the gas sector and has accused Russia of trying to gain control of Ukraine’s gas transit system to use as political leverage.
She herself, however, is reported to have made millions in the 1990s as president of a company that was for a while the main importer of Russian natural gas. That earned her the nickname of the “Gas Princess.”

Posted by: somebody | Oct 11 2011 19:54 utc | 4

Just reading this breaking story. I’m calling BS and a bit worried what the US is playing at.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1011/breaking61.html
and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/11/iran-terror-plot-saudi-arabia_n_1005413.html

The U.S. Justice Department is accusing the Iranian government of trying to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in a plot that that has been foiled by federal agents. ABC News reports that the plot would have also involved bombing attacks at the Saudi and Israeli embassies in the nation’s capital. A White House spokesman said that President Obama was first briefed on the plot in June and that stopping it was “a significant achievement by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
The Saudi Arabian embassy is located in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, near the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and across the street from the Watergate office and residential complex.

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Oct 11 2011 20:31 utc | 5

re 4. I hold no candle for Tymoshenko, I’m just asking for an explanation.
The Reuters link only contains an affirmation, no evidence of her corruption.
Probably she has been corrupt, her opponents also. Is she worse than her opponents? Not likely.
Does she deserve 7 years prison, or whatever it is? It is one corrupt accusing another.

Posted by: alexno | Oct 11 2011 20:55 utc | 6

i’d jail ukranians on principle

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 11 2011 21:36 utc | 7

i’d jail ukranians on principle

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 11 2011 21:36 utc | 8

The Iranian “attempt” to assassinate the Saudi and Israeli ambassadors reeks of a false flag operation.
Iran would have nothing to gain, but Israel, Saudi Arabia, and US neo-conmen would have lots to gain.
What’s disturbing is that Obama appears willing to be totally complicit in whatever the lunatic fringe feels like conjuring up.
Maybe a nice little war is exactly what Obama needs to rescue his electoral chances. Problem for him is that the damage done to the Persian Gulf oil infrastructure and to the global economy will not likely be fixed in a year.

Posted by: JohnH | Oct 11 2011 22:35 utc | 9

Isn’t intervening in a a running legal case before the court has found a judgement against the rule of law?
Of course it is – everywhere on the planet.
But we won’t be able to accurately assess the motivations of the West’s so-called leaders until someone leaks the complete list of names and addresses of everyone with an anonymous Swiss Bank Account.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 12 2011 2:13 utc | 10

@AlexNo – This old Guardian portrait goes into some details: The millionaire revolutionary. There is much more in the book the Guardian mentions about the various deals Tymoshenko made.
For the EU the point why they laud her is a later gas deal which was pressed through by the EU when the Russians stopped delivering gas to the Ukraine because it didn’t pay and the Ukraine skimmed of gas that was supposed to go to Poland. Tymoshenko then agreed to much higher gas prices for the Ukraine (said to be covered by a loan from the EU) only to get gas back up again for EU countries. It was bad, bad deal for her country and she had no authority to make it.
The EUObserver has more details on the current case:

On 19 January she, as prime minister, signed a “directive” authorising a new contract between Ukraine’s Naftogaz and Russia’s Gazprom. On the basis of this directive, she later obliged Naftogaz chief Oleg Dubyna to sign the contract. The deal set a final price of $450 per thousand cubic metres for Ukraine, obliged Ukraine to take a set volume of gas each month or pay for the set volume even if it did not need the full amount. But it did not oblige Gazprom to transit a set volume through Ukraine’s pipelines to the EU.
The terms are potentially disastrous for both Naftogaz and the Ukrainian economy.
The court hearings have shown that Tymoshenko did not have the right to sign the “directive” and to force Dubyna to sign the contract.
For any such directive to be legally valid, it has to be approved by all the members of the government, not just the PM. What Tymoshenko did in plain words is falsify a very important document.
…
And here’s the nub of it – if Tymoshenko is found guilty, Ukraine has a basis for revising the contract and Europe has a potential new gas war on its hands.

Posted by: b | Oct 12 2011 4:40 utc | 11

The EU hoi polloi is behaving worse and worse every day! Takin’ pages out of the USA playbook! Not jailing a criminal for the sake of democracy…you’d want to laugh if it wasn’t so serious. Ukraine is a sovereign country and can do as it likes (besides contravening international treaties etc.)
Tymoshenko was ‘crook’, imho. (This is not *only* going after an old opponent or the like, imho.) That the Ukr. would actually prosecute an ex-PM is to be saluted! And..hey.. The French courts are prosecuting Chirac, at snail pace to be sure, is that not ‘democratic’? For minor financial skullduggery, nothing ‘too serious’….!
Her PhD is on national regulation of tax systems (bloody useful, ha ha) and she started her bizness life with video rental stores.
Her mistake(s), I think, come from acting mostly alone or in temporary alliances (with her hubby in the background) and not wanting to, or being capable of, shrouding fraud, embezzlement, skim-off, and kick-backs, in shell corporations, offshore banks, getting protective laws passed, etc. Not very modern, and very much in the personal hubris money-class post-Soviet scheme. Were others doing the same..certainly…
So she has become a kind of emblem of the ravages of post-communism and privatization, and oligarch Queen with peroxide yellow braids.
Support from afar for her seems linked to the gas deals (see b at 11)…but maybe there is more to it, though I haven’t a clue what.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 12 2011 12:59 utc | 12

why have Bush and Blair and their ilk never been jailed

Posted by: brian | Oct 12 2011 21:03 utc | 13

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