BRUSSELS, March 21. /ITAR-TASS/. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk splashed cold water on the romanticized expectations of millions of Ukrainians believing that their country’s full-fledged membership of the EU was just round the corner.
“That’s not for today,” he told reporters on Friday on the prospects for the much-troubled nation’s joining the EU after Ukrainian interim acting prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk and European leaders had signed a 21-page-long ‘political’ preamble to the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement.
“Let’s face it,” he said. “Ukraine has more serious problems to tackle […]. There is no need to rush the course of history.”
Germany’s Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, gave a rather evasive answer when a reporter asked her about Ukraine’s accession prospects. “We need to see how the discussion in Ukraine progresses,” she said.
The other part of the AA, which contains more than 1,350 pages and spells out in detail the innumerable realignments Ukraine will have to make in its trade laws and operational standards, is to be signed at a yet unknown date after May 25 when Ukraine has a “presidential election.