Translated by Ollie Richardson

15:16:09
31/05/2017

ukraina.ru

Ukraine is lagging behind in the plan of the implementation of the Association Agreement with the European Union in all spheres.

This was stated by the Vice-Prime Minister concerning European and Euro-Atlantic integration Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze at a cabinet meeting in Ukraine.

“We lag behind in the schedule of implementation of the Agreement, and this gap is quite significant. I already said in March that in 2016 Ukraine implemented into legislation only 26 from the planned 130 acts of EU law,” she said.

Klympush-Tsintsadze noted that none of the spheres of the Association Agreement have been implemented completely: neither the questions concerning customs and transport, nor in the financial sector.

On May 30th, the Dutch Senate (the upper house of parliament) voted for the ratification of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. Holland was the only EU country that still hadn’t ratified the agreement. At the same time the Agreement with the Netherlands, as well as with other EU countries, actually offers nothing, and is even harmful.

“According to the data of the State Statistics Committee, for this first year, Ukrainian export to EU countries totalled 13.5 billion dollars, which is only 3.7% higher than the figures of the previous year. If this is compared with 2013, then the European export of Ukraine actually fell by 20% (in 2013 it was 16.8 billion). Where did Poroshenko take information about export growing by a quarter from?” said the political scientist Vladimir Kornilov to Ukraina.ru.

In 2016, the Netherlands proposed a version of the agreement by which the association with Ukraine doesn’t provide security guarantees, doesn’t assume allocation of additional financial aid, and also doesn’t grant to Ukrainians the right to live and work freely in the EU. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte set a condition whereby in the declaration there has to be point that the Association Agreement won’t be the first step on the way to membership of Ukraine in the European Union.

And most importantly, as well as in the case with the visa-free regime, Ukraine is obliged to continue its fight against corruption and to undertake necessary reforms, otherwise the Agreement will be severed, and the visa-free regime cancelled.

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