Ukraine's President's Office talks about expectations from Ukraine-EU summit

Integration of sectors of the Ukrainian economy into the single European market will be among the key decisions that will be discussed at the Ukraine-EU summit on 3 February.

Source: Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy head of the President's Office, on air during the national newscast on Friday, 13 January, as reported by European Pravda with reference to Ukrinform.

Quote from Zhovkva: "Important decisions will be made during the summit. In particular, the Prime Minister mentioned the preparation for the negotiations, and I will mention another important aspect. Despite the intensity of our negotiations, even before the start of the negotiations on accession, we are integrating certain sectors of the economy of Ukraine into the single European market, as happened with the electricity sector, for example," he said.

Details: According to the deputy head of the Office of the President, the Ukraine-EU summit will update the plan for the integration of Ukraine's economic sectors into the single European market, "and we will go through this process in parallel with the process of joining the European Union."

"We will also hope for the extension of the agreement on the liberalisation of road traffic between Ukraine and the EU, the liberalisation of trade. Now, as you know, we trade without duties and tariffs. The agreement is temporary, but we will talk about its prolonging. We will talk about unified roaming for Ukraine and the European Union," he added.

At the same time, Zhovkva noted that the summit will not ignore the issue of military, financial and political support for Ukraine against the background of a full-scale war with Russia.

According to the Association Agreement, the Ukraine-EU summit is an annual event. The last, 23rd summit, took place in October 2021 in Kyiv.

Earlier, Charles Michel Barend Leyts, press secretary of the President of the European Council, reported that the Ukraine-EU summit will be held in Brussels, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy received an invitation. But in the end, the parties agreed to hold the summit in Kyiv.

The 2022 summit was planned to take place in December, and it was supposed to be in Brussels. Preliminary announcements regarding its holding were made by the Ukrainian side. However, it was decided to postpone the summit to early 2023 in the end.

According to the sources of European Pravda, the lack of real results of such a meeting were among the reasons for the postponement; in particular, as it is known,  until the last moment, the EU side had problems even with the approval of the package of macro-financial assistance in the amount of 18 billion euros promised within the framework of the G7.

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