Accession to EU: Stefanishyna predicts that Ukraine completes remaining tasks of European Commission by fall
Ukraine was expecting a higher interim assessment from the European Commission on the implementation of seven recommendations in preparation for EU accession, while the recognition of progress in their implementation is unprecedented.
Olha Stefanishyna, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, said this on the air of the United News telethon, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
"Our ambitions were higher - in particular, we expected that the anti-corruption package of measures would be evaluated more thoroughly. We also hoped that before this assessment we would fully adopt the legislation on launching the Constitutional Court reform, but it was adopted only in the first reading. But I believe that for the European Commission to recognize any set of commitments as fulfilled less than a year after receiving candidate status is also unprecedented, as countries have been working for years to implement sets of such recommendations," Stefanishyna said.
She added that for us, "mathematically, the numbers are quite modest, but for the European Commission, this is a historic breakthrough."
The Vice Prime Minister also noted the importance for Ukraine that this interim assessment clearly outlined the steps that still need to be taken to complete the implementation of all seven recommendations by October and move on to making decisions on starting EU accession negotiations.
Stefanishyna predicted that Ukraine would complete the remaining European integration tasks by the fall.
"We have to understand that the remaining five sets of recommendations are not at the zero stage, a lot of work has been done over the year. In fact, the decisions are ready, some of them need to be adopted only technically... Obviously, we will have time to do everything possible by October," she said.
As reported, on June 22, the European Commission presented an interim assessment for Ukraine on the implementation of seven recommendations necessary for the start of accession negotiations. So far, Ukraine has fully implemented two recommendations, good progress has been made in implementing one, and the rest have been assessed as "some progress".