Журнал Viche 2013 №3

№3, 2013

Euro Forecasts: balancing the interests or final political choice

– Certainly, the question is about the preparation of the summit of the countries - participants of the “Eastern Partnership”, which will be held in Vilnius this year in November and where we are going to sign the Agreement on coalition and the deep and overall free trade zone – stated the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, commenting to the media on the results of the meeting with the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz on January, 24, 2013 during the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (on January 23-27) (right on the photo).

Thus, nothing else remains to official Kyiv as to fulfill the all necessary preconditions of the document signing, but domestic officials still believe that the agenda of bilateral relations is much wider and therefore does not concern only the necessary reforms. Although, without revival of the democratic processes the progress on the way of coming together and establishing the contacts of the political contractors will not be observed. Thus, the issue of imprisoned former officials will be an obstacle to an open and transparent two-way dialogue during the development of fruitful relations with the EU. Herewith Ukraine as the member of the Council of Europe promises to implement correspondent to them decisions of the European Court of Human Rights and at the same time notes that many Ukrainians consider convicted people guilty because the national courts have adopted legal decisions in their cases.

To convince the world community in the availability of the transparent electoral system and openness of the disinterested study of the situation regarding affairs of former members of the government the mandate of the special monitoring mission Kwasniewski - Koks (above in the photo), which the European Parliament has empowered with the appropriate authority in May 2012, was extended.

The leading theme of the summit probably will be cooperation at the sectoral level, which, in fact, has been developing between the parties regardless of the political conjuncture, because about 80% of work of the bilateral relations between Ukraine and the EU are concentrated just on the fields of industry or sectoral cooperation (nowadays there are 28 of them).

It remains to hope that the Europeans themselves have decided with the strategic vision of the role and place of Ukraine in geopolitical configurations of the continent, the understanding of its importance for the EU and the countries of the former Soviet Union, which, respectively, will give the possibility to stop any speculations regarding directions of the Ukrainian political movement and the final strategic choice - East or West.

Yulia TSYRFA