Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-01-14-Speech-3-057"
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"en.20090114.3.3-057"2
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"Madam President, the Czech Presidency deserves recognition for its active role in settling the dispute over the renewal of Czech gas supplies. However, it would be a big mistake to turn away before addressing the long-term causes of this problem.
The origin clearly lies in Russia's ambitions to extend its sphere of influence into Ukraine and on into Central Europe. The aim of the EU must therefore be to keep Ukraine on the Union’s radar screen. However, this will not be possible if Ukraine continues to sponsor opaque transactions and to cling to ‘neighbourly prices’ which fail to reflect the true market situation and which keep Ukraine politically dependent on Russia.
The Czech Presidency’s priorities include energy security and reinforcement of the Eastern Partnership. A fundamental aspect of this partnership must be to help Ukraine set market energy prices, negotiated in the context of long-term contracts, as quickly as possible.
The Presidency should also exert effective pressure on Kiev to dismantle opaque economic structures which undermine efforts to reform and develop a legal state. Only strong external pressure on Ukraine and active cooperation can help it to abandon short-term and often personal interests in favour of genuine independence from Russia, and a legal state that is free of ubiquitous corruption. Unless a clean-up is achieved in Ukraine, we cannot expect the EU to respond effectively to Russia’s increasingly assertive policy towards Central and Eastern Europe.
The right time to establish close cooperation between the EU and Ukraine will be immediately after the gas crisis has been defused. Unless the Czech Presidency, on behalf of the EU, succeeds in placing effective pressure on Ukrainian leaders, we will soon witness not only further days of freezing weather and no gas, with major consequences for the economies of Member States, but above all a dangerous shift in geopolitical relations in Central and Eastern Europe."@en1
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