The EU and Ukraine are planning an association agreement, but a major sticking point is the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Diplomats still hope Ukraine will sign by the end of next week.
Ukraine will have one more chance to meet the EU’s conditions for signing an association agreement. On Monday (18.11.2013), European foreign ministers in Brussels left it open as to whether an agreement with Ukraine would be signed by the end of next week at the summit with the EU’s eastern partners in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
“It’s not yet possible, but it’s not excluded in the future — so there’s not much time left, but there is some time, so we will see,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Antanas Linas Linkevicius, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
The European Union has urged the Ukrainian parliament to enact promised reforms to its electoral law and judiciary. “There are some laws in the works, some past first reading. They have to accomplish this,” Linkevicius warned. “They have to show progress, tangible results, and then we will be able to discuss this.”
The EU says there must be progress, especially in the case of Yulia Tymoshenko. The former prime minister, jailed for two years, should be allowed to leave for medical treatment in Germany. The EU views the sentence against the opposition politician as the politically motivated judgment of a non-independent judiciary.
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament delayed a debate about Tymoshenko until Thursday. Over the past few days, EU negotiators and mediators have been in Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said after the consultations in Brussels: “We are sure that all sides in Kyiv have recognized the seriousness and the urgency of the situation. I wish to emphasize the urgency, because time is of course running out.”
