You're reading: European Parliament to discuss Cox-Kwasniewski’s report on April 18 (UPDATED)

BRUSSELS – The European Parliament (EP) will hear a report from its monitoring mission, lead by former European Parliament President Pat Cox and former President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, at the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on April 18, 2013.

A decision on the further fate of the mission will be made at the meeting.

This will be a second report of the mission. The first one, which has not been published, was presented on October 2, 2012.

There is a tough struggle occurring over the future of the
Cox-Kwasniewski mission in the European Parliament. President of the
Greens Group in the European Parliament Rebecca Harms (Germany) and Head
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs Elmar Brok (the European People’s
Party, Germany) insist on ending the mission.

At the same time, after the release of former Interior Minister Yuriy
Lutsenko, the opponents of the mission have fewer arguments for closing
it due to a lack of results. The decision by Ukraine’s President Viktor
Yanukovych to pardon Lutsenko is associated with the work of the
Cox-Kwasniewski mission.

In this regard, the mission’s report is expected to be positive. The
report is believed to be one of the key factors in the issue of the
signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

The Conference of Presidents will be held behind closed doors, and it
is still not clear whether the report of the mission will be made
public, and whether the meeting participants will come out to the press.

The European Commission is expected to consider the issue of signing the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in May.

As reported, the European Parliament monitoring mission to Ukraine
headed by Cox and Kwasniewski started monitoring the court proceedings
involving Tymoshenko on June 11, 2012 under an agreement between
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and European Parliament President
Martin Schulz.

Their mandate was subsequently expanded to include the court
proceedings involving Lutsenko and former Acting Defense Minister of
Ukraine Valeriy Ivaschenko. Their work was suspended when parliamentary
elections began in Ukraine, and was then restarted.