REUTERS
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin says that trilateral consultations between Ukraine, Russia, and the European Commission on a deep and comprehensive free trade area (DCFTA) between Ukraine and the EU have yielded no results, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
"The consultations haven't ended with any specific result. This has completely been confirmed by the European Commission, and our side also confirms that. Detailed solutions were offered, but the Russian side simply rejected them. The Russian side doesn't need any practical solutions now," Klimkin told reporters in Brussels on Monday.
Klimkin claims Moscow wants "to stop our movement towards Europe, towards the EU with the effective introduction of the free trade area."
According to him, the latest consultations were different from the previous ones. "They were to a significant extent surreal, as they were being held against the backdrop of a well-known order by the president of Russia, and today the Russian prime minister issued a resolution while we were holding the talks and banned farm produce exports to Russia, which, in my view, let down the Russian delegation, if this is a diplomatic way of describing the situation," he said.
The European Delegation to Ukraine in turn announced that European Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin and Russian Minister for Economic Development Alexei Ulyukayev could not come to a political agreement during the talks in Brussels on Monday on the practical solutions to Russia's concerns related to the implementation of the DCFTA between the EU and Ukraine.
"We spent 18 months in extensive discussions on TBT [technical barriers to trade], SPS [sanitary and phytosanitary measures] and customs cooperation to accommodate Russia's concerns. We were ready to make the efforts needed to reach a joint understanding. Therefore, I was deeply surprised by President Putin's decree of December 16, 2015 that suspends all Russia's obligations towards Ukraine in the framework of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] FTA," Commissioner Malmstrom said.
"This measure goes against the mandate, the spirit and the objective of these talks," she added.
Russia's continued insistence on a legally binding agreement, which would amount to a reopening of the bilateral agreement between the EU and Ukraine, could not be accommodated, as has been made clear throughout these talks.
"As has been conveyed from the beginning of the talks and reconfirmed by President [of the European Commission] Jean-Claude Juncker last week the DCFTA cannot be amended – neither directly nor indirectly," she added.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine, the EU, and Russia on December 21 held a trilateral meeting in Brussels to find a solution to removing Russia's concerns and preventing its possible limitations on trade with Ukraine in connection with the introduction of the free trade area with the EU as of January 1, 2016.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on December 16 signed an order to revoke a free trade agreement between Russia and Ukraine as of January 1, 2016, which was being implemented as part of the free trade zone within the CIS.
The European Union and Ukraine announced they would neither postpone the launch of their free trade area again nor introduce any amendments to the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, which also covers the DCFTA.
The introduction of the DCFTA was once put off. It was originally planned to be introduced in October 2014, however, during trilateral consultations between the EC, Ukraine and Russia in Brussels in September 2014, the sides agreed that its introduction should be after December 31, 2015.
Later Russia again announced the need to postpone the DCFTA and threatened it would impose a full commodity embargo should the agreement become effective.