The Ukrainian side has officially been given the negotiating position of the European Union on three clusters in Lviv, which will form the basis for further technical work on Ukraine's path to EU accession.

Source: European Pravda

Details: Marie Bjerre, the official responsible for enlargement in the Danish government (Denmark currently holds the presidency of the Council of the EU), announced that Ukraine is being given all the data it needs for further technical negotiations with the Commission immediately on three clusters: No. 1 ("Fundamentals" – this includes issues such as democratic procedures, the rule of law and so on), No. 2 ("Internal market" – this is the largest cluster) and No. 6 ("External relations" – this is the simplest cluster, where Ukraine is seeking to achieve rapid success).

In particular, Bjerre read out and also handed over to Ukraine a document that is critical for the negotiations – the EU's negotiating positions for each of these clusters. In EU terminology this is called a Draft Common Position (DCP).

Until now there had been a strict ban in the EU on communicating European DCPs to candidate states before negotiations on the relevant clusters officially begin.This taboo has now been broken at Denmark's insistence.

Moreover, there is already an informal agreement with the Cypriot presidency that at the beginning of the year it will similarly provide Ukraine with the DCPs for the remaining three sectors.

The path chosen by the EU theoretically makes it possible for Ukraine to complete the negotiations even before Viktor Orbán's veto is overcome – but only if Ukraine implements reforms in line with the roadmap it has received today.

After the opening of technical negotiations, Ukraine and the EU agreed on a priority 10-point reform plan, which includes provisions on anti-corruption and the rule of law.

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon !