Association agreement with Ukraine may be signed by late June - EU
BRUSSELS. April 2 (Interfax) - The European Union expects to sign the association agreement with Ukraine by late June, a senior European official told Interfax.
He said the EU and Ukraine would be able to do so and explained the timeframe with the Ukrainian presidential election due on May 25.
If the president is not elected in the first round, the second round of the election will be held within two weeks, another two weeks will be assigned for processing possible appeals and the Verkhovna Rada will meet afterwards; therefore, four to five weeks will be required and that period will determine the signing date, he said.
The EU official rejected the possibility of the presidential election's deferral. He referred to the opinion of former Ukrainian Prime Minister, Batkivshchyna party leader Yulia Tymoshenko who said she was not interested in delaying the election.
The source also opined that the signing of the Ukraine-EU agreement would have no effect on the position of Russia.
The signing will not alter Russia's conduct, so it is very important for the Ukrainian government to amend the consequences of the negative campaign about the association agreement organized by the previous government, the official said. He said he had no doubts that "Russian propaganda" would present the association agreements with Georgia and Moldova as documents contradicting the interests of those countries and advantageous only for the European Union. It is important to start a discussion of the results of these agreements reached in Moldova and Georgia, and the Ukrainian government needs to deal with the negative opinion, the official said.
He also thinks that Russia will take a pragmatic stance after it sees that the process is irreversible.
The EU officer said he believed in the provisional application of the agreement, which would start three months after it was signed.
