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The EU Council believes that the Eastern Partnership should become a more ambitious and flexible basis for cooperation with partner countries, including Ukraine.
On May 11, the Council of the European Union approved conclusions on the Eastern Partnership policy for the post-2020 period. About this reported Council press service.
In particular, the Council of the EU welcomed the progress made by participants in the Eastern Partnership program and called for “the full implementation of the Association Agreements and wide free trade areas with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine”.
“The Council recalls the declaration of the 2017 Eastern Partnership Summit, which recognizes European aspirations and the European choice of Eastern partners,” the conclusions say.
The EU welcomed the “significant achievements of the Eastern Partnership” and reaffirmed the “approach based on encouraging Eastern partners to continue reforms”.
Going forward, the Eastern Partnership, the Council said, should become “a more strategic, ambitious, flexible and comprehensive framework for cooperation, allowing participants to jointly tackle common and global challenges in a wide range of areas.”
Among the foundations of the Eastern Partnership, the EU Council calls for democracy, human rights, the rule of law, good governance and successful anti-corruption policies, as well as economic reforms, environmental and climate problems, and the digital transformation.
In a comment to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, Ukraine’s representative to the EU, Mykola Tochitsky, said that the main signals for Ukraine in the approved conclusions are “support for European aspirations and the European election, territorial integrity and peaceful resolution of conflicts, greater integration with the EU and access to the EU internal market “. “
“Secondly, in its conclusions, the EU recognizes the strategic importance of the Eastern Partnership and calls for its great ambitions and flexibility. This is precisely what we are constantly promoting in our contacts with the EU and its member states, together with other associated partners: Georgia and Moldova The flexibility enshrined in the conclusions will allow us to develop the idea of launching an additional format for the EU dialogue with the partners of the so-called Eastern Partnership +, he said.
“Eastern Partnership” – a project of the European Union, existing since 2009. Its objective is the development of integration relations with six countries of the former USSR: Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Three of these states, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, asked Brussels to create an additional interaction format for the associated partners and announced their intention to gain the prospect of EU membership.
On September 16, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada and the European Parliament simultaneously approved the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. On September 1, 2017 it entered into force in its entirety. On June 11, 2017, a visa-free regime came into effect between Ukraine and the European Union.
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