EU-Ukraine Association Agreement: Minister denies approval of delaying free trade zone


Ukraine and the EU are to ratify the Asociation Agreement today. The negotiations lasted five years.

On Monday Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko called the planned simultaneous approval of the Association Agreement by the Ukrainian and EU parliaments a ‘historic moment’ that will define his country’s westward-looking future.

The Ukrainian government intends to implement the Association Agreement with the European Union from the very first day after its ratification by the Ukrainian and European parliaments and will decide on its implementation at the Sep. 17 sitting, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said.

However, on September,12 the EU and Ukraine agreed to delay implementation of the free-trade pact until the end of 2015 in a concession to Russia, which is pushing Kyiv to join a Russian-led Eurasian customs union.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso discussed a number of key topics on the Russia-European Union agenda over the phone on Monday evening, the Kremlin press service has reported.

The sides paid great attention to the practical implementation of an agreement, achieved during trilateral consultations in Brussels on September 12, to postpone the enforcement of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement until January 1, 2016.

At the same time, the Ukrainian government has not approved any documents to delay the launch of the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area consistent with the Association Agreement, Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said in a program aired by the First National Channel on Monday evening.

“The Ukrainian government has not decided to delay or adjust the free trade zone provision of the Association Agreement. The government’s position is clear: we will begin to implement this agreement the day after it is ratified”

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Refusal to sign the same agreement sparked months of protests leading to the ouster of Poroshenko’s predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, and eventually spilled over to eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting to break away from Kyiv.

www.belsat.eu/en, following Interfax-Ukraine

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