The Presidents of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, and Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, met on Wednesday 20 March for a dinner to discuss "approaches to the development of relations between Ukraine and the EU in the near future and to coordinate joint action to meet existing challenges", according to the Ukrainian Presidency.
According to them, "EU leaders stressed the importance of the irreversibility of Ukraine's progress towards rapprochement with the EU".
The four presidents discussed the state of reforms in Ukraine, including the fight against corruption, including the Constitutional Court. "It is important to do things right, because Ukraine's budget depends on it. The IMF programme is linked to it, as is the EU's macro-financial assistance. The conditionalities of the second tranche have been clearly highlighted", a European source told EUROPE.
According to a European source, leaders discussed the progress made since 2014: the association agreement with its comprehensive and detailed free trade area, the introduction of the visa-free regime, macro-financial assistance.
The "Russian aggression", including the illegal annexation of Crimea and tensions in the Azov Sea, was discussed. As usual, Mr Poroshenko called on the EU to extend the pressure of sanctions on Russia to "release all Ukrainian sailors and other hostages [and] completely free the territories of Ukraine from Russian occupation". According to the Ukrainian Presidency, the participants in the mini-summit agreed to accelerate the launch of the EU programme on social and economic assistance to the region bordering the Ukrainian Azov Sea, the Pryazovia.
Leaders also discussed the energy security of the EU and Ukraine, including Nord Stream 2, to which Ukraine is strongly opposed and which divides Member States.
Finally, a few weeks before the Ukrainian and European presidential elections, the leaders discussed, according to a European source, the "disinformation during the elections". The Ukrainian Presidency stated that the Presidents had agreed "to coordinate efforts to combat external interference in electoral processes […] in particular in the field of cybersecurity and resistance to disinformation". (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)