Government predicts that Ukraine will fulfil rest of EU's "candidate" recommendations by October

Ukraine was counting on a higher interim assessment from the European Commission regarding implementing seven recommendations within the framework of preparations for joining the EU, while the recognition of progress in their implementation is unprecedented.

Source: Ukrinform, citing Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration on air of the joint national 24/7 newscast

Quote: "Our ambitions were higher – we expected, in particular, that the block of measures related to anti-corruption would be evaluated more thoroughly. We also expected that before this evaluation we would fully adopt the legislation launching the reform of the Constitutional Court, but it was adopted only in the first reading. 

But I believe that for the European Commission to recognise any block of obligations as fulfilled less than a year after receiving candidate status is also an unprecedented story because most countries have been working on implementing blocks of such recommendations for years," Stefanishyna said.

Details: She added that for Ukraine, "mathematically, the numbers are quite modest, but for the European Commission, this is already a historic breakthrough".

The Deputy Prime Minister also noted the importance for Ukraine of the fact that this interim assessment clearly recorded the steps that still need to be taken to complete the implementation of all seven recommendations by October and proceed to the adoption of decisions on the start of negotiations on EU accession.

Stefanishyna predicted that Ukraine would cope with the remaining European integration tasks by autumn.

Quote: "We must understand that the remaining five blocks of recommendations are not at the zero stage; a lot of work was done during the year. In fact, the decisions are already ready; some of them need to be adopted only technically... It is obvious that we will have time to do everything possible by October," she noted.

Background: On Thursday, the European Commission said that Ukraine has fully implemented two out of seven conditions necessary to open accession negotiations and that progress has been made on the remaining conditions.

As stated in the European Pravda article, the EC's report on Ukraine is generally positive and aims to help Kyiv cope with the problems – there are several of them, but they are not considered insurmountable in Brussels.

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