The Ukrainian authorities, following the EU-Ukraine summit, announced the continuation of Ukraine’s dialogue with Europe and further, deeper integration, but at the EU-Ukraine summit, no practical result was achieved, the MP, deputy head of the Opposition Bloc faction Serhiy Lovochkin believes.

“Diplomatic assessments of the participants were commended on both sides. Again, no specific decisions were made. Assurances of support were commended from the EU. From the Ukrainian authorities – familiar, but still on paper proposals for energy, digital, customs and visa “alliance with the EU”, Serhiy Lovochkin points out.

The MP recalled that Ukraine could not use possibilities for economic cooperation, created by the EU: only in 2017, after 3 years of the free trade area, commodity exports from Ukraine to the countries of the European Union exceeded the level of 2013. At the same time, it should be noted that since 2013, commodity exports to the EU grew by only $ 0.77 billion, which is, for example, 5% of the losses in similar exports to the CIS countries.

“The same approach was in working with European financial institutions. Billions of dollars of credit and financial support, reserved for projects in Ukraine, remain unclaimed. The authorities show disinterest in the participation of European investors in Ukrainian projects,” Serhiy Lovochkin considers.

The European Union pointed out a separate point – the corruption nature of the Ukrainian authorities, which is confirmed by the Transparency International rating-research “Corruption Perception Index”, where both in 2015 and in 2017 Ukraine took 130th place out of 180 countries.

One of the declared topics of the EU-Ukraine summit was the discussion of the settlement of the conflict in the Donbass. “Unfortunately, there are no real proposals from the authorities for today. The implementation of the Minsk agreements, which are guaranteed by the leaders of the key EU countries – Germany and France – is not moving. Since mid-2015the work on the implementation of the political part of the agreements has been frozen. The approaches proposed by European mediators – the “Morrell plan” and the “Steinmeier plan” – were ignored by the current Ukrainian authorities,” the MP points out.

“For the progress in relations with the EU to become a reality, there is a lot of work to be done. First of all, it is necessary to achieve the restoration of peace in Ukraine. This requires direct negotiations of Ukraine with all parties to the conflict, a roadmap for its settlement, which will be approved in the “Norman” format and implemented with the active participation of European countries. It is necessary to look for ways to change the working conditions of the free trade area with the EU, as well as work with the European Commission, each individual country in order to make cooperation more beneficial for Ukraine,” Serhiy Lovochkin considers.