“For more than a year, lot of people have been busy preparing for a successful outcome of the Vilnius Summit in order to sign the most ambitious agreement EU has offered in return of reforms of the Ukrainian society, ’ Ms. Severinsen says.
Former co-rapporteur of PACE has no doubt of the wish of especially the young generation in Ukraine that Vilnius could be the decisive step into a European future. “They want a society without corruption and based of Rule of law. A new course of reforms would make a signal, that Ukraine want modernization and to give space for honest hard working small and medium size business to grow in a predictable and reliable society. Under the autocratic surface of the Yanukovych regime in Ukraine there are so many talented people, who today have no real possibility to develop their potentials. They hope that the association agreement could be a new beginning for their society,” she says.
Hanne Severinsen admits that she has had some doubts of the real intension of the Yanukovych Regime. “Would they really want to give up their excessive power and reform the prosecutor’s office? And do they really want to risk Yulia Tymoshenko out of prison? Why this chaotic way to pretend to fulfill promises already given in February?” she asks. In her opinion, the suspicion could be that they have only wanted the agreement in order to have a better trade-position towards Putin’s Russia.
“Vilnius could have been a turning point in Ukraine’s history. This momentum seems now to have been lost by a Regime that only has their own private interest to fight for,” Ms. Severinsen says. In her opinion, that will need to be a miracle which seems now very far away to regain the momentum next week.
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