You're reading: Yanukovych: Signing of Association Agreement with EU a priority for Ukraine until Nov. 2013

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has assured EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fuele that Kyiv is working to remove obstacles to the signing of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.

“The signing of the Association Agreement and Free Trade Area remains our priority and objective for this short period of time – until November 2013. We understand perfectly well that we need to achieve much greater progress than we have up to now,” Yanukovych said at a meeting with Fuele in Kyiv on Friday.

Yanukovych also said that he sees the commissioner’s visit to Ukraine as a landmark event ahead of the EU-Ukraine summit (to be held in Brussels no Feb. 25).

“We’ve carefully studied the EU’s signals regarding the prospects for the further development of our relations, and we continue to work on the reforms that we launched in 2010, among them reforms aimed at overcoming the shortcomings that were announced during the elections,” he said.

It is expected that the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, including the creation of a free trade area, will be signed at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius this November.