Yatseniuk: Eastern Partnership summit in November last chance for Ukraine to sign association deal with EU
The leader of the United Opposition faction, Arseniy Yatseniuk, has said he believes that the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius this November is the last chance for Ukraine to sign the Association Agreement with the EU.
"Europeans are intelligent people. They have already postponed this period for the third or fourth time. But they've reached the limit. They reached the limit when they said: if you really want us to be together, then you have such a possibility, both the Ukrainian authorities and the Ukrainian state. Why November? It's the deadline for the preparation of documents for the summit in Vilnius and the signing of the agreement," he told reporters after meeting with EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule in Kyiv on Thursday.
"The Ukrainian authorities should have done all of this six months ago, but they [Europe] gave a second chance personally to [Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych to correct the mistakes," Yatseniuk said.
He said that the signing of the agreement between Ukraine and the EU "is not for Yanukovych, it is for the people of Ukraine, for the Ukrainian state and for our European future."
Yatseniuk also promised that the opposition would collect all signatures needed to adopt a declaration in parliament on the EU integration aspirations of Ukraine.