Expert: No obstacles to EU-Ukraine summit, it can be held in February 2013

The EU-Ukraine summit will be held in February 2013 and it will not significantly change relations between the sides, Scientific Director at the Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation Oleksandr Sushko has said.

"The EU-Ukraine summit will probably be held in the second half of February 2013. There are nuances: perhaps it will be March, or possibly the beginning of February," he said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The expert also said: "In general, there is an understanding that the refusal to hold the summit is an extraordinary event that cannot be justified by the current cooling [in bilateral relations]. We've already faced a cooling in relations with the EU during the era of [former Ukrainian President Leonid] Kuchma, but this has never led to the cancellation of summits."

He also said that there were currently no obstacles to the holding of the summit.

Sushko said that delays in determining the date of the EU-Ukraine summit are not improving relations between Kyiv and Brussels. He also said that the date would be announced in the next few weeks.

"Another thing is the agenda of the summit. It's clear that ideally the association agreement should have been signed at the summit. It looked so exactly a year ago. Now is does not look so, and the agreement won't be signed at this summit," the expert predicted.

Sushko said that the association agreement, "in the best scenario," would be signed at the Eastern Partnership summit in November 2013.

"In my opinion, this is the earliest date when the association agreement could be signed," he said.