BRUSSELS, November 13. /TASS/. Tensions between Russia and the EU are mounting, European Parliament president Martin Schultz told a news conference on Thursday.

He said it was important to take account of the political environment around and to recognize that the tensions between Russia and the EU, as well as Russia and Ukraine had not only remained unabated but they were on the rise, in fact.

Schultz said it while speaking to a group of reporters after the parliament had ratified an EU-Moldova agreement on association (AA).

Earlier on the same day, EU foreign policy spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic said the foreign ministers of the Union’s twenty-eight member-states would discuss latest developments in the East of Ukraine at a conference on November 17 and would also consider a possible reaction on the part of the EU.

Along with it, Kocijancic declined to say whether or not the EU was mulling an enlargement of the blacklist of Russian and Ukrainian officials whom the Europeans would ban entry of their countries and whose assets in the EU territory - provided they were found there - would be frozen.

Kocijancic said to this the EU services had done a lot of preparatory work and, in the first place, analysis of the situation and had designed new restrictive options.

Now the EU expected a discussion of the current situation by the foreign ministers and the EU response to the latest developments, she said.