Next Ukraine, Russia, EU ministerial meeting on DCFTA scheduled for September

Experts of the European Union, Ukraine and Russia at a trilateral meeting in Brussels on July 7-8 agreed to hold a ministerial meeting in early September to discuss the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. "The experts will continue work in the coming weeks in view of reporting to EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Russia's Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin in July. Further steps will be decided on this basis, including the next ministerial meeting in early September, with the view of reaching a common understanding on bilateral and trilateral solutions compatible with the AA/DCFTA," the EU Delegation to Ukraine said on Wednesday. According to the delegation, the aim of these talks was to find solutions to the concerns raised by Russia regarding the implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement/Free Trade Area (AA/DCFTA) which will be provisionally applied as of January 1, 2016. Following the mandate set out in the Minsk Declaration of February 12, 2015 and the Joint Operational Conclusions of May of this year, three subjects were discussed in Brussels: technical regulations, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) issues and customs cooperation. The exchanges were constructive and some progress was made on the basis of concrete suggestions put forward by the EU.