Poroshenko says Ukraine needs five years to make a bid to join EU

It will take Ukraine five years to meet the conditions necessary for making a bid to join the European Union, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said at the Ukraine-EU Summit in Kiev today, on April 27.

“We are ambitious in our plans and actions, and therefore, we declare that we must implement the Association Agreement (with the EU) within five years to be able to apply for EU membership,” Poroshenko said.

Poroshenko believes it very important for Ukraine to receive "strong signals” to make sure that its “hard and exhausting fight will finally lead to a full membership of the European family.”

“I call on the EU to support the Ukrainian people’s aspiration for integration and accept that Ukraine as any other country that respects common values and is ready to protect them can become a EU member in future after it meets all the necessary criteria,” Poroshenko said.

Earlier, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the EU Vladimir Chizhov told TASS “Ukraine is farther from the EU membership than even, though it has always been far quite from it.”

As EADaily reported earlier, Kiev is hosting the Ukraine-EU plenary summit. EU President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are present. It is the first high-level summit after the coup in Ukraine in Feb 2014.