As a result of the aggression against him, the evaluation process of the request for Ukraine for eventual admission to the European Union. Their possibilities are still limited, however, since the requirements to enter are not only geographical but also institutional.
The interest of Ukraine it is explained by the difference between their standard of living and that of the countries that are already members, assuming that once inside the Union the forces of the market economy and the aid to be received will progressively close the gap. But being part of EU it entails costs to assume and rules to comply with, which means that when said difference does not exist, or is reversed, as in the case of Switzerland, the motivation to enter decreases, and in the countries that are already part of it, it generates pressure to leave. Those pressures build up over time and create resentments that can later come to the fore. So it was in the UK, as revealed by one of the multiple incidents that eventually led to his departure.
A few years ago a regulation of the EU established a mechanism to dispose of refrigerators and freezers cooled with gases that are harmful to the environment. Used equipment was prohibited from being delivered to businesses for resale, or simply used to extract metal and other materials. They had to be sent to special processing plants, where harmful refrigerants would be removed without polluting the atmosphere.
According to the British authorities, the EU was slow to specify the details of its regulations, which meant that by the date of its entry into force not a single such plant had been built in the United Kingdom. Discarded refrigerators accumulated in vacant lots, dumps, and in the vicinity of highways and byways, at the rate of several thousand units per day, and became a greater environmental hazard than the one they were trying to address.
