Draft written interview president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy with Interfax-Ukraine ahead of the EU-Ukraine summit What is the agenda of upcoming EU-Ukraine summit? What will be the main goal of this summit? What kind of outcome we can expect? What exactly EU wants to achieved during this summit? Our agenda will focus on four main issues, the political situation – including our Association Agreement negotiations - our economic relations, mobility issues and regional and international relations. The main goal of the Summit is to take stock of progress, identify issues where there is more work to be done, and to endorse our priorities for the next year. A summit also provides an opportunity to assess in more general terms the implementation of commitments and living up to declared values and priorities. Leaders need to take responsibility for their performance on jointly agreed objectives. The summit will allow us to take stock of the negotiations of the Association Agreement. We will set our priorities for further work. And it will be a place for open and critical discussions where we will also raise our concerns on a number of current challenges facing Ukraine and the EU. I will also be meeting with members of the opposition parties and representatives from Civil Society in Ukraine. There is an opinion that summit will have a technical character because there is nothing to discuss until Tymoshenko is in the prison. What you can say about this? Yulia Tymoshenko herself has been and still is one of the strongest advocates of Ukraine’s long-term political association and economic integration with the EU. This long-term strategic perspective remains a key feature of our approach to EU-Ukraine relations. And that is precisely why the EU is as keen as ever to close the remaining points in our Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area negotiations. But we also emphasize that the realisation of this perspective depends on a broad basis of shared values. I make no secret of the concerns we have on rule of law, especially the interference between political considerations and the application of criminal law. Constraining the possibilities of free and fair political competition by politically motivated criminal justice is not in line with the values and principles we enshrined together for example under the aegis of the Eastern Partnership. Can we expect that EU-Ukraine relations will be frozen or will be slow down until the case of Tymoshenko and others will be solved? Our general concern is related to the risks of politically-motivated justice in Ukraine. The Tymoshenko case is only one example of this although the most striking one. A comprehensive justice reform in line with international standards is absolutely key. At the same time, we have made great strides in basing the EU-Ukraine relations on the new basis of the Association Agreement. After months of difficult and intensive efforts the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area negotiations were concluded successfully. We have achieved significant progress on the wider framework of the Association Agreement. The door is open to begin the work of political association in earnest, when conditions allow. What kind of development we can expect towards Association Agreement? How important is initiation of this document in the frame of summit? What exactly will happen with this document than in the meaning of signing and ratification? First, we need to come to final agreement on the text of the treaty itself. Initialling is an act undertaken when the consolidated text of an Agreement is technically ready for approval by Chief Negotiators. Since we still have open issues to agree, initialling will clearly not be possible at the Summit. But we would like to be able to announce that negotiations are finalized, and to begin the work of communicating the Agreement to citizens on both sides, since it will of course need democratic endorsement before it can ever come into force. Is it possible that only part of AA – DCFTA – will come to a force? Our goal is to have a comprehensive, value based agreement between the EU and Ukraine. Only such an agreement will bring us closer to the strategic goals we mentioned earlier. It is not without precedent in other international agreements that certain elements are provisionally applied or applied on an interim basis. But it is too early to speculate about such eventualities, and our goals remain very clear. What is the position of the EU towards the Ukrainians request about Europeans perspective in the AA? We are still negotiating. The Association Agreement is a critically important milestone, but it is not necessarily the final stage of a journey. It is not amongst the objectives of the Agreement to settle the issue of EU perspective. At the same time, this Agreement does not preclude movements in this direction at a later stage. In other words, the Association Agreement does not prejudge Ukraine’s future, but it does provide for political association and economic integration with the EU now. How do you think the EU-Ukraine relations will develop in the upcoming future? I want our relations to deepen, so that people will come closer together, not just governments, and so that the EU will be able to show that it can deliver in helping with modernization in Ukraine. This is what our Agreement is all about - in terms of longer term goals, there is no limit to what can be achieved under our political association and economic integration. However, this also requires a major effort from Ukraine, and concrete results in delivering reforms that are broadly supported and stand the test of time. What is for sure is that we will see more co-operation on the world stage, including in global issues like anti-terrorism and peacekeeping; also on technical issues like environment and energy, and above all in sharing and maintaining the most essential values - human rights and fundamental freedoms. Increased short-term mobility and the benefits of economic development and trade will of course contribute enormously to this process.