The Central Election Commission (CEC) has refused to register an initiative group calling for the holding of a nationwide referendum on a popular initiative on Ukraine's accession to the Customs Union.

A total of 13 members of the committee present at its Tuesday sitting supported this decision.

As deputy chairman of the CEC Andriy Mahera said, according to the law on the nationwide referendum, a report of an assembly of citizens should be submitted to CEC at least five calendar days before its holding. However, citizens Petro Symonenko, Heorhiy Buiko and Oleksandr Adveny on September 3 submitted the report about the assembly of the citizens at Spartak stadium on September 8, four calendar days before.

Kyiv's District Administrative Court on September 6, under lawsuit of the European Party of Ukraine, also banned the CEC from sending a representative to the assembly.

The CEC didn't send a representative to this meeting on the basis of that decision.

As Mahera said, when creating the initiative group on holding a nationwide referendum on a popular initiative on Ukraine's accession to the Customs Union, the participants failed to follow the procedure foreseen by the law.

As reported, on August 16, the Central Election Commission received a report from the Communist Party of Ukraine on its plans to hold a gathering of Ukrainian citizens on the said referendum, which they were planning to hold on September 8, 2013.

On August 29, the European Party of Ukraine registered an appeal at the District Administrative Court of Kyiv, asking the court to ban the Communist Party of Ukraine from organizing and holding gatherings of Ukrainian citizens on the holding a national referendum on a popular initiative regarding Ukraine's accession to the Customs Union.

However, three citizens, including leader of the Communist Party Petro Symonenko, submitted to the CEC a report on the holding of an assembly of citizens regarding a nationwide referendum. The court banned the sending of a CEC representative to this assembly, although it didn't ban the meeting itself.

On September 8, at the Spartak stadium in Kyiv, citizens held an assembly organized by the Communist Party and Ukrainian Choice public initiative, which attracted 2,508 people. The assembly approved the members of the initiative group for the collection of the signatures to support a nationwide referendum with a total of 9,892 people, and formulated the question to be put for the referendum: "Do you support accession of Ukraine to the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russian Federation?".