Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi's press statement during the joint press conference following the EU-Ukraine Association Council

Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi's press statement

Thank you very much.

I want to first of all welcome Prime Minister Shmyhal.

And I start by saying that, of course, the European Commission continues to stand by Ukraine and the people of Ukraine in defending their country.

Therefore, in this fight, as long as it takes, the Commission will continue to support, with all our means, the Ukrainian state to function and to run and perform the public services under this huge pressure of war, of aggression it's causing.

We're continuously in contact in many different fora with the Ukrainian counterparts.

Today, in the Association Council, we conveyed our unwavering support to the Prime Minister and his team.

And also, we took stock of the ongoing support Ukraine is receiving from us.

When it comes to our financial support, we noted that since the start of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, the EU, the Member States and the European financial institutions have all together made available 98 billion euros to Ukraine and to its people.

This includes humanitarian, economic, military support and funding made available also to host Ukrainian refugees in Europe.

This support also includes the first-ever payment, worth of 4.5 billion euros, under the newly established Ukraine facility. This payment was quick and timely, as we have promised, and necessary. Therefore, we worked under huge time pressure, but we have delivered.

We would also expect the next payment to come in April already, subject to progress on policy conditions, as they were agreed between the Commission and Ukraine previously.

I also want to recall that the Ukraine Facility of 50 billion euros of support is there also for the next four years. This is to support the recovery and reconstruction and modernization of Ukraine as well. And this should create predictable, reliable financing for the next four years. The facility will cater both for short-term state needs and recovery requests, and medium-term reconstruction and modernization of the Ukraine reconstruction work. And this should also help the private sector to participate in the reconstruction and recovery exercise and should also bring further the reforms necessary for EU accession.

We welcome that Ukraine has approved its plan now, ahead of the Association Council. I understand that the Prime Minister has another meeting to hand over this Plan to our President. This has been common efforts, working together with the administration in Kyiv. And I think that this Plan should be the main tool for the implementation of the Ukraine Facility. And this Plan should also be a comprehensive plan of the whole country for the internal reforms and investment priorities. And it should be also ready to be presented to the donors, the international partners, so that they can also come forward with their contributions.

The Commission will now assess this Plan and will make proposal for a Council Implementing Decision outlining the reforms and investments for the next four years. Once the Council approves this decision, we will start the disbursement on a quarterly basis, subject to qualitative and quantitative steps that have to be made by Ukraine.

Now, this is the first EU-Ukraine Association Council since the European Council took the decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine. We are pleased that this decision has contributed to maintaining a positive momentum in the country for advancing reforms, despite the ongoing war.

It is important that Ukraine build on this positive momentum, as enlargement will remain a merit-based process. In particular, I want to emphasize the continued importance of the judicial and anti-corruption reforms.

Today, we took note of the work on the four remaining reform steps that are necessary for the adoption of the Negotiating Framework, and on the basis of which the European Council took its decision to start the accession negotiations back in December.

We recalled that the Commission will continue to monitor the implementation of all these steps, and this includes advancing the rights of persons belonging to national minorities, where we emphasize the need to closely engage with minorities and their kin states.

We also encourage Ukraine to work hard towards completion of the other recommendations that we have made to each chapter back in our Enlargement Report of last year, and we will assess this as part of our regular reporting exercise on enlargement progress later on this year.

We also record for the Ukrainian colleagues that the Commission has tabled the draft Negotiating Framework for discussions in the Council, which is now to be agreed by the Council once the internal deliberations have been successful.

We also discussed the state of play of implementation of commitments under the Association Agreement, and we also underlined the importance of taking full advantage of the possibilities under the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area.

There is still potential that we have not used.

There are very many promising areas, and we are already working in areas like the roaming area, the ACAA, the Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance, as mentioned by the Prime Minister, but also we have touched upon the energy sector.

So, in conclusion, I think it's safe to say that what we see is a stronger and more resilient Ukraine, despite all the efforts of the Russian aggressors, and it is also very clear that Ukraine will come closer and closer to the European Union.

Thank you.