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Ukrainian president discusses European integration with PACE, EU Commission presidents

The European Union is expected to take a final decision on signing the Association Agreement with Ukraine at the Vilnius summit on November 28-29

Viktor Yanukovich EPA/Brendan McDermid/POOL

Viktor Yanukovich

© EPA/Brendan McDermid/POOL

KIEV, November 15, /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich on Friday had a telephone conversation with President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso to discuss issues of Ukraine’s European integration in the context of the preparations for an Eastern Partnership Summit in the Lithuanian capital city Vilnius later in November 2013, the press service of the Ukrainian head of state reported.

No further details of the conversation are available.

Also on Friday, the Ukrainian president met with President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Jean-Claude Mignon. No details of this meeting are available either.

The European Union is expected to take a final decision on signing the Association Agreement with Ukraine at the Vilnius summit on November 28-29. To have this agreement signed, the European Union demands that Ukraine fulfill a number of requirements concerning the modernization of its legislation. The primary demand is to pass a law on medical treatment abroad for Ukraine’s former Prime Minister Yulia Timosheko. Timoshenko now is serving her seven-year jail term at a prison in Kharkov, Ukraine, for abuse of office while signing gas contracts with Russia in 2009. For over a year she has been in a hospital located in Kharkov.

The European Parliament’s monitoring mission led by former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former President of the European Parliament Pat Cox still hopes that Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) would be able to pass the necessary laws at its session on November 19.

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