The Ukrainian president said that Ukraine’s membership in the EU could not be postponed
Kiev considers Ukraine’s full membership in the EU a “strategically achievable dream” which cannot be “postponed indefinitely”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this after talks with his Lithuanian counterpart Gitanas Nausseda in Kiev.
“Ukraine’s full membership in the EU cannot be put off indefinitely. Ukraine in the EU is not a far-fetched fantasy. It is a strategically achievable dream, which we want to implement as soon as possible by forming a coalition of EU countries, which in a good sense will become lobbyists of Ukraine on this difficult path”, – the Ukrainian leader said.
On 16 September 2014, the Verkhovna Rada approved a draft law on the ratification of the association agreement between Ukraine and the EU. On 1 November the same year, Ukraine started implementing the main provisions of the agreement, and from the beginning of 2016, the provisions on a free trade area also came into force in a temporary application regime. The agreement came fully into force on 1 September 2017.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski said last year in an interview with the Slovak publication Hospodarske noviny that “Ukraine should get a concrete signal from the European Union about the possibility of the country joining the organisation” and that “the Ukrainian people have a lot to give to Europe”.