Yeliseyev: Association agreement could be signed before Vilnius summit
Brussels – The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement could be signed before the Eastern Partnership summit to be held in Vilnius in November 2013, and the implementation process could be launched before the ratification of the document is completed, Ukraine’s representative to the European Union, Ambassador Kostyantyn Yeliseyev, has said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
“This is possible. Our position is that the agreement should be signed as soon as all of the technical procedures related to this are completed. The EU, in its December decision, envisaged an opportunity for Ukraine not only to sign the agreement before the Vilnius summit, but also to start its temporary application after the signature until its full ratification. This is important, because the ratification of the document, after it is signed by all EU member states, usually takes a lot of time,” he said.
Apart from the fact that Ukraine can start working on the implementation of the agreement until its full ratification, Yeliseyev said that such a practice is not new for the EU.
“It is only necessary to determine the extent of the application of this agreement. This will be the subject of talks between Kyiv and Brussels, but I would outline three possible options: maximalist, middle and minimal. It’s very important that we start applying the agreement, at least in the part on the free trade area,” the diplomat said.
When asked whether the document is technically ready to be signed, Yeliseyev said that the translation of the part of the document on the free trade area was currently being verified.
“I think that by the end of the first quarter of this year the agreement could be technically ready. Then the European side will have to take two political decisions, particularly the EU Council’s decision on the signature and the consent of the European Parliament,” he said.
The Ukrainian side, in turn, also must conduct certain internal procedures – the issue concerns a respective mandate, perhaps a presidential decree, to the signing of the agreement, the ambassador said.
When asked to comment on the fulfillment of the conditions set out in the December conclusions of the EU Council on Ukraine, the diplomat said that this document “concerns the criteria the progress on the implementation of which will enable us to speed up the process of signing the agreement.”
“As ambassador to the EU, I proposed drafting a concrete roadmap, the implementation of which will make it possible to sign the agreement before the Vilnius summit. If these proposals are accepted, instructions will be given on them and the progress will be made, which will be positively assessed by the EU, and it’s not ruled out that the document could be signed before November,” he said.