26 October 2009, 18:16
People´s Deputies of Ukraine, delegation of the European Parliament, representatives of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, and experts in parliamentary cooperation with the EU participate in the Thirteenth Meeting of the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union.
The participants shall discuss crucial issues concerning relations between the European Union and Ukraine, namely, the Agreement on Association and Free Trade Zone, development of Ukraine and the EU (upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine, Lisbon Agreement and institutional reforms in the EU, challenges of the global economic crisis), cooperation in the field of justice and internal affairs (implementation of agreements on simplification of visa regime and readmission of individuals, visa-free regime and inter-personal contacts), economic and sector cooperation between Ukraine and the EU, esp. in the field of power engineering, cooperation in the common neighbourhood domain, etc.
In his welcome speech, Volodymyr Lytvyn, Chairman of The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, stressed the importance of supporting key issues connected with the relations between Ukraine and the EU by the European Parliament. He also stated: "We sincerely expect that the majority of representatives of the united Europe at the European Parliament have a positive attitude towards Ukraine´s place in the European community".
V.Lytvyn also expects that the standpoint of the European Parliament "that presupposes that Ukraine shall have strong prospects for the European Union will not alter".
The Head of the Ukrainian Parliament briefed on the basic issues of cooperation between Ukraine and the EU to be settled and stressed the importance of "putting the negotiations between Ukraine and the EU concerning the Agreement on Association into practice, and introducing visa-free regime for the citizens of our country". V.Lytvyn deems important to secure efficient dialogue with the EU concerning visa-free regime and stressed the necessity of creating "a comprehensive free trade zone" between Ukraine and the EU.
Borys Tarasiuk, Co-Chairman of the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the EU, stated that the said meeting was peculiar, "as it is held on the eve of two significant events that will influence the development of relations between Ukraine and the EU". He meant Ukraine-EU summit scheduled for 4 December 2009 in Kyiv. "We expect that after the Paris Summit 2008 where a new basic agreement between Ukraine and the European Union in the form of the Agreement on Association was signed, Ukrainian and EU leaders will have enough ambitiousness to implement Clause 49 of the Agreement on EU in the next step towards recognizing Ukraine as any other European State", - stressed the Co-Chairman of the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the EU.
B.Tarasiuk stated: "However, we object against setting any time limits for signing the Agreement on Association, as it may bear negative influence on the quality of the document".
As far as the presidential elections were concerned, B.Tarasiuk stated that Ukraine was concerned with the observance of European standards during the elections, and that "free and fair voting will render a possibility for Ukraine to continue domestic reforms in the political, economic and social fields aimed at the harmonization with the European Union".
The Co-Chairman of the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the EU stated that the visa-related issues were of great importance for Ukraine, "as it concerns thousands of Ukrainian citizens daily".
The Thirteenth Meeting of the Committee on Parliamentary Cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union will be adjourned on 27 October.