The European Union is interested in signing an association agreement with Ukraine, and the priority for the EU is the quality of this agreement, but not the date of its signing, Managing Director of European External Action Service for Europe and Central Asia Miroslav Lajcak said in an interview with Channel 5.
According to Lajcak, a participant of the negotiations on the agreement, both the political and economic parts are parts of a single agreement, which cannot be separated. At the same time, at present, the EU does not make any additional conditions for Ukraine and does not promise what it cannot do, he said.
"The most important thing for us is the quality of the document. So we do not try to focus on a particular month, we are trying to achieve a good document that will suit both sides. The negotiations have been going for a very long time, almost four years. We managed to complete the negotiations on a free trade area within this agreement. And I would like to see the political part completed, because together they constitute one document. I do not want to enter into any speculation, the quality is crucial to us," the channel’s press service quoted Lajcak as saying.
"The European Union is interested in signing this document – the association agreement with Ukraine. We take this agreement very seriously, we keep our promises, we do not introduce any additional conditions, we do not depart from what we had promised. So as for the content [of the agreement] our position today is the same as it was at the beginning of these negotiations. I want to make it clear that the European Union is a partner that fulfils its promise. It does not promise more than it can do, and it quite applies to our negotiations," Lajcak said.
He also stressed that the agreement on association is not an agreement on membership, but it is a deal that offers the prospect for Ukraine to become an integral part of Europe’s political, economic and cultural space.
