Prime Minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko believes
Ukraine’s main foreign policy priority should be membership in the
European Union.
"My guiding principle for Ukraine’s foreign policy is very concise:
'EU-YES'. We are an organic, historical, geographical and cultural part
of Europe. We do not need to return to Europe, because we never
mentally left it. Ukraine is Europe, and Europe will have to reckon
with this fact," Yulia Tymoshenko said in an interview in the Lviv
newspaper "Express."
According to the Prime Minister, the issue of Ukraine’s full
integration into European structures is only a matter of time. "And
this time isn’t measured in decades. I think that Ukraine will become a
full-fledged member of the European Union very soon."
She recalled that "when Europe was only getting up on its feet,
Kyiv already had Europe's largest library, and alumni of medieval
Ukrainian universities "were valued as much as graduates of Harvard and
Oxford today. We are Europeans."
Speaking at a press conference Yulia Tymoshenko said once again she hopes that
Ukraine will gain membership of the European Union within the next five
years. Tymoshenko said that she sets
the goal of signing an agreement on political association with the EU
and a free trade area agreement in 2010.
Архiв
