New agreement, possibly association agreement, with Ukraine will give no clear prospect of Ukraine’s membership of EU, commissioner says

Brussels, July 22 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Although the new agreement with Ukraine is most likely to be entitled an "association agreement," it won’t envisage any clear prospect of Ukraine’s membership of the European Union, Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in Brussels on Tuesday following a meeting of the Council of the EU. 

"It was important to arrive at a shared decision concerning the package… on the association agreement and concerning our deeper commitments on the enhanced agreement, but it [the agreement] won’t envisage any future development of [the EU’s] relations with Ukraine," she said.

"We feel that Ukraine has to do a lot of to stabilize its domestic politics," she said.

She pointed to serious conflicts between President Viktor Yuschenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

"We would like to see this change," she said.

Ferrero-Waldner said the matter would be also discussed at the Ukraine-EU summit in France on September 9.

A well-informed source told Interfax-Ukraine that members of the EU had arrived at a joint position on recognizing Ukraine as a European country in the preliminary statement of the agreement.

Source: Interfax-Ukraine
http://www.interfax.com.ua/en/news/main-news/153391/