Volodymyr VECHERKO: “Association agreement is a key to the doors of the EU”

Completing the negotiations in relation to the text of the Association Agreement at the XV Ukraine-EU summit on December, 19, 2011, Ukrainian high-level officials, and the whole society, during more than three months with impatience has been waiting for the initialing of this document to open a gate for subsequent work in this direction – up to its ratification. Therefore, having put visas on the Association Agreement on March, 30, 2012, the leaders of the negotiation groups of Ukraine and the European Union “put a dot” in the five-year process of the preparation of the document which is to change the Collaborative and Partnership Agreement, which has been in force from 1998 and is still a legal framework of relations between Ukraine and the EU. Therefore, taking into account the experience of the countries which have already become the members of the EU and their processes of signing and ratification of the Association Agreements, the question appears about the subsequent fate of the Ukrainian version of the document which has to pass corresponding technical procedures and consideration in the parliaments of the EU country-members. In order to receive the explanations about necessary technical moments of preparation of the Association Agreement for its signing and ratification, and also to define the consequences of such foreign-policy steps for our state, the editorial staff of “Viche” magazine appealed to the folk deputy of Ukraine, First Vice-Chairman of the Committee on the questions of the European Integration of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Economic and Sectoral Collaboration between Ukraine and the EU, and also WTO Volodymyr VECHERKO.