Kiev will no longer insist that its Trade Agreement on Association with the European Union sets out prospects for accession to the bloc, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Gryshchenko said Friday.
The agreement offers Ukraine closer economic and political integration with the EU as a step toward full membership, but depends on Ukraine adopting democratic and legal standards in line with the rest of Europe.
“Sometimes we think that the European Union should finally decide where it wants to see Ukraine. But I would like to reassure EU representatives in advance: today we will not solicit for membership prospects,” Gryshchenko said at a high-level debate on "Ukraine-EU Relations: At the Rubicon" in Kiev.
“Delays in the process of delivering the agreement do not concur with the interests of Ukraine and the EU,” he added.
Ukraine’s criminal prosecution of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has sparked a wave of protest among EU leaders in recent months. Many European leaders have called for a boycott of the European Football championships which will be held in Ukraine and Poland this summer.
A leader of the 2004 pro-democracy mass protests known as the Orange Revolution, Tymoshenko was jailed for seven years in 2011 for exceeding her authority in pushing through the 2009 gas deal with Russia, which the Ukrainian authorities say caused billions of dollars in damage to the country’s economy.
Tymoshenko denies wrongdoing, claiming her trial was part of a political vendetta by President Viktor Yanukovych on his rivals, which he denies.
Yanukovych, seen as closer to Russia than his predecessors, returned to power in 2010 six years after the Orange Revolution. Since then, relations with Europe have wavered amid concerns about Ukraine's alleged human rights violations, corruption, and abuse of power.
