Ukrainian parliament due to adopt bills recommended by European Commission by mid-Dec

MOSCOW. Nov 27 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian parliament is due to adopt a number of bills by the middle of December to comply with the European Commission's recommendations for the beginning of negotiations on Ukraine's entry into the European Union, deputy head of the Servant of the People pro-presidential faction Yevgeniya Kravchuk said.

"We will have one more meeting [of the parliament] before December 14. It is very important to adopt these [anticorruption] bills as a whole. [...] We have time to do so, there is no other option," Ukrainian media quoted Kravchuk as saying on a national telethon.

In her words, the parliament should do everything for the absence of formal grounds to allege that Ukraine has not met the provision on the protection of national minorities to the fullest.

"We are expecting the government to register amendments to the Law on National Minorities with due account of the additional remarks by the Venice Commission on the language of education," Kravchuk said.

This is a matter of "a broader opportunity of studies in EU languages - Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian," Kravchuk said. "There will definitely not be any talk about preferences for the Russian language," she said.

The government is drafting a bill on lobbyism, Kravchuk said. In her opinion, the parliament has time to adopt it before spring.

"I think we will vote on a bill on lobbyism before March. Actually, after the decision [of the Council of the European Union on the beginning of negotiations on Ukraine's entry into the European Union], I hope in mid-December, the European Commission will have time to prepare 'the framework of negotiations', sometime before March, which is when, as they say, we have to catch up with everything," Kravchuk said.