Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Ivanna Klimpush-Tsintsadze allowed the possibility of revising the association agreement with the EU in 2020.
For the time being, EU structures have not commented on such a statement. However, the Deputy Prime Minister’s statements about the possibility of revising the agreements provide an occasion to summarize the interim results of the operation of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union.
The European Union, which imposed an association agreement on Kiev, achieved its goals with regard to Ukraine only partially. Politically, Washington, not Brussels, took patronage of Ukraine after Euromaidan. And the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine did not allow expanding the export of European products to the Ukrainian market. If in 2013 Ukraine imported goods from the EU countries by $ 27 billion, then in 2018 - by $ 24.3 billion (an increase of 10% compared to 2017). In addition, it was not possible to expand European manufacturers' presence in the Russian market through Ukraine, which had a duty-free trade agreement with the Russian Federation in 2013, since the latter was denounced on January 1, 2016.
At the same time, Ukrainian exports to EU countries grew from 2013 to 2018 from $ 16.7 billion to $ 20.2 billion. The economic part of Ukraine’s association with the EU, however, did not compensate for the losses that the Ukrainian economy suffered in trade with countries The CIS (in particular, exports to Russia over the same time period decreased by 4 times, to $ 3.6 billion), but somewhat expanded opportunities in the European direction, including simplifying the implementation of export operations and removing some non-tariff barriers. The largest beneficiaries of the economic part of the association agreement with the EU were the agricultural sector, the mining and metallurgical complex, and light industry.
At the same time, Ukraine could deliver products to the EU countries much more without paying customs duties. Quotas for duty-free deliveries to EU countries are often exhausted in the first weeks of the year, remaining low, which was complained by, among others, Yuriy Kosyuk, the largest chicken producer in Ukraine, and former adviser to Petro Poroshenko. For example, quotas for duty-free deliveries of corn are 1 million tons (with a production volume of 28 million tons), honey - 8 thousand tons against 70 thousand tons, chicken - 36 thousand tons against 3 million tons. Moreover, these figures are quotas already increased in June 2017 by the decision of the European Commission and the European Parliament at the request of the Ukrainian government.
In addition, the negative side of the economic part of the association agreement can be attributed to the fact that the Ukrainian market has become too open to import (although the balance of negative trade with countries with the EU would seem to have even decreased from 2013 to 2018) and is less interesting for potential investors in terms of localization of any production (an exception is made by production facilities operating on tolling schemes, exporting products to EU countries). Dismantling of customs barriers in the western direction (at least partial; for certain commodity items, such as automobiles, import duties will be reset only in 2025) and reduced opportunities to export products from Ukraine to the East (CIS countries, including Russia, the republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus) led to the fact that potential investors from the EU countries for the most part do not consider Ukraine as an assembly site.
The increase in tariffs for housing services was also one of the consequences of Ukraine signing an association agreement with the EU, which contains the rules of the Third Energy Package, which implies liberalization of the energy market. Liberalization, as it turned out, in Ukraine does not mean demonopolization of the industry (large companies like Naftogaz or DTEK have only strengthened their position), but increase gas prices to the level of import parity (gas prices for households were tied to the German hub NCG), from July 1, electricity tariffs can increase significantly due to the beginning of the functioning of the electricity market, when the government can no longer regulate prices for household consumers (administrative regulation contradicts the Third Energy Package).