Kyiv may sign Association Agreement with EU in March – presidential advisor
“The Ukraine-EU summit, due to take place in early March 2014, will be their next opportunity to do so,” Honcharuk said.
The official also said he was hopeful that the joint working group would be able to sort out all the differences over the timing of the event.
EU postpones signing of association agreement with Ukraine until EU-Ukraine summit in early 2014 – source
After the failure at the summit of the Eastern Partnership, the EU has postponed the term of signing an association agreement with Ukraine until the EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels in early 2014, a high-ranking diplomatic source informed ITAR-TASS today.
EU failed to convince Ukraine to sign association and free trade agreement
The European Union has lost hope that Ukraine will sign a landmark association and free trade agreement at an early date. Such is the result of the first day of the Eastern Partnership Summit that’s under way in Vilnius on the 28th and 29th of this month.
European leaders appear to have made no progress on reviving a landmark trade pact with Ukraine at the first day of an EU summit in Vilnius.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych abruptly froze plans to sign the trade and reform deal last week, under pressure from Russia.
He detailed Ukraine’s economic woes at the meeting with EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, citing high prices Ukraine has to pay for natural gas from Russia.
EU leaders have been trying to persuade him to change his mind.
The deal was planned as the highlight of a summit aimed also at building ties with other East European states.
Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite told the Agence France-Presse news agency that EU “arguments did not reach Ukraine president’s ear and mind”.
“So far we see that positions have not changed,” she said.
And when asked how negotiations went, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said: “They didn’t.
“It’s over,” he said.
Pro-EU protests are continuing in Ukrainian cities against the government’s decision to back out of the agreement.
Mr Yanukovych has dismissed an EU condition for signing the agreement – that Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister and opposition leader, be freed from jail.
He has requested more EU financial aid.
Yanukovych proposed starting three-way talks between Russia, Ukraine and the EU and urged Brussels to help Ukraine soften the terms of a possible loan from the International Monetary Fund, an EU diplomat said.
But the EU rejected trilateral talks and said Yanukovych must give a commitment to sign the agreement that he refused to give.
“He had to make that leap of faith that he wasn’t prepared to make,” the diplomat said.
Merkel said she had no hope that the EU and Ukraine would reach agreement at the Vilnius summit, which ends on Friday, but she said the door remained open to Ukraine.
Read more:
– EU looks to speedy progress in association talks with Kyiv – Ashton
– In Vilnius, EU to find out about duration of pause in signing association agreement with Ukraine
– EU not to soften demands for sake of Ukraine’s signing Association Agreement
– Ukraine, EU may form association in February or March 2014
– US affiliated org’s most likely finance, control protests in Kyiv – Ukrainian MP
– Door still open to Ukraine on trade pact – Merkel
– Euro integration opponents ‘bury’ Association Agreement with EU in Kyiv
– White House website petition against Yanukovych signed by 63,000
Voice of Russia, TASS, Reuters, BBC, AFP, RIA, Interfax