Ukrainian Officials: EU Association Agreement Initialing is a Matter of Weeks

KYIV, Ukraine, December 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Ukrainian government plans to initial the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine in the upcoming weeks. The first Vice Premier, Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Andriy Klyuev noted that the foremost task for the Ukrainian government was initialing the Association Agreement. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin, responsible for the initialing preparation, stated that the process would take several weeks.

In his statement, Minister Klyuev emphasized the importance of the Association Agreement for Ukraine. He said that the draft of the document was quite ambitious and some serious work lied ahead,since the Agreementwas 2,000 pages long. He mentioned that the technical stage of initialing was currently unfolding both within the Ukrainian and EU public institutions. He also shared that the parties agreed to initial the Agreement a.s.a.p. during the 15^th EU-Ukraine summit on December 19.

Deputy Minister Klimkin, in his turn, stated that during the EU-Ukraine summit a political decision was made to prepare the initialing of the Agreement soonest possible. "I think this will take several weeks," he said. He explained that the delegations from the EU and Ukraine would meet in a few weeks to harmonize the final text of the document. Overall, the preparations should take up six to eight weeks, stated the official.

As of now, negotiations over the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine are over. As a result, the EU-Ukraine cooperation has entered a new phase of cooperation. This development ensued from the 15^thEU-Ukraine Summit. It took the negotiating parties three years to arrive at this point in the bilateral relations. Decision to head for association was first made at the 12^th EU-Ukraine summit on September 9, 2008, in Paris.

In August 2011 the President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso declared that the EU was willing to establish a long term relationship with Ukraine and the Association Agreement would note remarkable progress of Ukrainian reforms.

Notably, various officials of the EU member states, including Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia, backed Ukraine's European ambition.

European integration has been a long-term foreign policy goal for Ukraine. The country began negotiations with the EU in 1999.