|
Ukrainian Parliament fails to adopt bills for signing Association Agreement with EU
14.11.2013 18:12 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) —
The Ukrainian parliament has failed to adopt the bills required for signing the Association Agreement with the European Union, NRCU reports.
As earlier reported, the lawmakers gave a preliminary approval to bills on public prosecution and on amendments to the election law last week and set up a work group for drafting a bill that would allow convicts to go abroad for medical treatment. Closing the parliament’s extraordinary sitting on Wednesday morning, Speaker Volodymyr Rybak said that the work group had failed to table the latter bill. Opposition MP Hryhoriy Nemyrya, chairman of the Standing Committee on European Integration, told reporters that at 7 p.m. Kyiv time, the European Parliament would hear a final report by the Cox-Kwasniewski monitoring mission to Ukraine and decide whether to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement at the Eastern Partnership summit due in two weeks. «Cox and Kwasniewski will report whether the Ukrainian authorities have resolved the issue of selective justice. They attended the parliament’s extraordinary sitting, expecting the pro-government majority to help the President keep his promise. Tonight, unfortunately, they will have to report that things stand pat. They told us today that the Ukrainian authorities had assured them that the law on medical treatment of convicts abroad would be adopted on November 19th and would be immediately signed by the President,» Nemyrya said. Alexander Kwasniewski said at a news briefing after the parliament sitting: «November 19th is the ultimate deadline and we expect the lawmakers to make the positive decision. We understand that it’s very difficult politically, but we hope that they will muster political will to reach consensus. We hope that all the laws required for signing the Association Agreement will be adopted by November 19th.» «Normalization of relations with Russia is issue number one for the national economy,» Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said at the Cabinet’s regular Wednesday meeting. He said that the 25% reduction in Ukrainian exports to Russia was fraught with massive closedowns of Ukrainian enterprises, layoffs, shrinking revenues, and dropping living standards. «Nobody has offered nor will offer Ukraine any compensation for the loss of this market and appealing to the WTO for mediation can hardly help,» Azarov said. «Russia is building higher and higher protective barriers and spectrum of trade restrictions is growing wider - from anti-dumping investigations and sanitary restrictions to more rigid technical regulations. This is, unfortunately, the reality that we are facing and that can’t be changed by any ideological appeals. The President has ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to take urgent steps for unblocking economic relations with the Russian Federation, but they must not contradict our national interests,» Azarov said. He didn’t make it clear whether a «reset» in relations with Russia would mean Ukraine’s decision not to sign the association agreement with the EU, which had caused tension between Kyiv and Moscow.
Also available:
|
| |
|
|