Tag: selective justice

Failure to sign an association agreement with Ukraine at a regional summit in November would be a blow for the EU’s Eastern Partnership initiative aimed at pulling six former Soviet republics closer to the EU, Lithuania’s foreign minister said. EurActiv reports from Vilnius.

Ukraine is taking “active steps” to win the sympathy of Germany, the country most strongly opposed to the signature of a landmark association agreement with the EU in the absence of a solution to the imprisonment of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, diplomats told EurActiv.

The European Union has urged Ukrainian authorities to “reconsider thoroughly” the imprisonment of  Yulia Tymoshenko following a European Court of Human Rights ruling that the arrest of the former prime minister was illegal and politically motivated.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday (7 April) pardoned two allies of his main foe, ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in a move to appease Western critics but gave no sign of being ready to free the imprisoned opposition leader herself.

Petro Poroshenko, a former top government minister and an influential businessman, said yesterday (7 March) he regretted the “selective justice” that led to an opposition lawmaker to lose his parliamentary seat.

The 25 February EU-Ukraine summit is not expected to make a breakthrough in relations between Brussels and Kyiv, but it can set the course for improvement ahead of the Vilnius Eastern Partnership summit in November, Amanda Paul, analyst at the European Policy Centre, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

EU ministers adopted yesterday (10 December) a rather long text on the Union’s relations with Ukraine, leaving options open for the holding of a bilateral summit and for signing the association agreement in 2013, provided that they see “determined action” in a number of areas, including “progress in addressing the issue of selective justice”.

The European Commission is concerned about the many “stumbling blocks” which prevent it from proposing member states to sign the Association agreement and the Deep and Comprehensive Free trade Agreement (DCFTA) with Ukraine, Commissioner Karel De Gucht said yesterday (24 September), in an interview with EurActiv.

The European Parliament’s centre-right political group has joined Ukrainian opposition forces in condemning the Ukrainian Central Election Committee’s refusal to register imprisoned political leaders Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko as candidates for the October parliamentary elections.

EU ministers held an animated discussion in Brussels yesterday (14 May), evaluating the risks of “losing Ukraine to Russia” if too much pressure is put on the country over the treatment of imprisoned former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

The Ukrainian prosecution will press murder charges against the country’s former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in two weeks time, Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin, responsible for her case, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Meeting with journalists in Brussels yesterday (25 April), Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy said that if "all problems" between Ukraine and the EU were solved, the Parliament in Kyiv could pass extraordinary legislation to set former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko free from jail. 

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, serving a seven-year prison sentence on abuse-of-office charges, has dismissed new allegations of her involvement in the murder of a parliamentary deputy nearly 16 years ago.