Remarks by High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini at the joint press conference with Petro Poroshenko, President of Ukraine in Kyiv, 9 November 2015
Check against
delivery.
It is always a
pleasure to be here in Kyiv.
As you have said Mr
President, the main purpose of my visit here, apart from all the issues we have
discussed, is to show that the situation in Ukraine remains top priority on the
European agenda. While the European Union is focusing on what is happening at
our southern and south-eastern borders with conflicts in the Mediterranean
region, it is very crucial that we keep focused, united as Europeans, on the
situation in Ukraine.
I have spent part of the first year of my mandate
explaining that our attention to the East should not overshadow the need to
work together on the south of our neighbourhood. Now
I am sending a complementary message that as we focus very much on the
migration crisis, on the Mediterranean, on the Middle East, we have to keep
very high and top of our agenda our common work on the situation in eastern
Ukraine, the non-recognition policy of the annexation of Crimea, and the reform
process in Ukraine itself.
I hope that my presence here and the presence of
many of my colleagues from the Commission in the coming days - I think there
are going to be some four, five visits in the next weeks here from Brussels at
the highest possible levels - are a concrete sign of the fact that Ukraine
stays extremely high on our common agenda, because we share a path and we need
to work together.
It is indeed my second visit here in one year. I
was really glad to meet my friend, the President. I started my visit with
meetings with civil society representatives and Crimean Tatar leaders,
extremely useful and good for me, and I hope also for them in exchanging views
and discussing the way forward. I am also having meetings with the Prime
Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Speaker of the Parliament and members of
the Parliament themselves as well as then a coordination meeting with all the
ambassadors of the European Union countries here in Kyiv.
Meeting with the President was not only a pleasure
- like every time we meet here in Kyiv, or in Brussels or everywhere else in
the world, which happens luckily quite often and in a very productive way - it
was mainly a moment for us to compare notes on where we are on two main issues.
On one side - the
implementation of the Minsk Agreements. We shared the assessment of the fact that we are
today in a much better position than it was the case months ago, with the
ceasefire finally in place and the withdrawal of weapons started. Still we have
a number of important steps on which we work together, together with the rest
of the international community - together with the OSCE, with working groups,
with the Normandy format that just a few days ago met on the level of the
Foreign Ministers in Berlin - that I hope can open the way for further steps both
on the security track and on the political one when it comes to full
implementation of all points of the Minsk Agreements by all sides.
We have discussed this at length, including
obviously the modalities for local elections in eastern Ukraine, on the basis
of Ukrainian law and in line with ODIHR standards. Another immediate concern is
access for OSCE SMM and humanitarian organisations.
On these issues immediate and consistent progress is needed. We also discussed
very concrete and practical work that we can do together - for example the
European Union can work on something crucial like demining of some areas that
could be relevant for further steps.
We also discussed at length our bilateral issues,
in particular the trade part of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement that is
going to be provisionally applied as of 1 January 2016. We have done a lot to
start the preparation of the implementation of this agreement. We have agreed
to make the most of the remaining time in order to find practical solutions to
Russia's concerns over the implementation of the agreement. As you know, the
European Union is facilitating the talks on this issue, as well as on the
gas/energy talks.
We spent a large part of our time, of our meeting
discussing the reforms - not general, theoretical issues, but very concrete
ones. First of all, we stressed the need to deliver on the anti-corruption
reform, which is the key to the credibility and the sustainability of all the
other reforms. I discussed this at length with the President, but also with
representatives of the civil society. And that is going to be key also for the
implementation of the trade part of the Association Agreement,
it is also one important element of our discussions on Visa Liberalisation
Action Plan.
I stressed the need to have anti-corruption bodies
that can start the work soon, and I know the President is fully committed to
that and with the trusted leadership selected through a credible and
transparent process. We have also discussed, as you mentioned, public
administration reform, judiciary reform and other crucial reforms, and we are
and we remain ready to support you on all these steps in a very concrete way.
I would stop here because I know we run late. We
had, as always, good meetings, which also means long
ones and fruitful ones, so I stop here.
European Union
http://eeas.europa.eu/statements-eeas/2015/151109_02_en.htm