OREANDA-NEWS. May 31, 2012. Ukraine can and will contribute to strengthening Europe. This was announced by First vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Valeriy Khoroshkovsky during his speech at the Wroclaw World Forum which was held May 31, 2012.

The First vice Prime Minister of Ukraine highly appreciates the cooperation between Ukraine and the EU within the framework of the Eastern Partnership. "The Eastern Partnership has established a good basis for a multilateral dialogue between the EU and countries of the region. Ukraine considers the Eastern Partnership as an important component of bilateral relations with the EU. We believe Ukraine can and will contribute to strengthening of Europe," he said.

Valeriy Khoroshkovsky stressed that our country carries out a systematic work towards European integration. "Over the past three months we decided 15 of the 25 key issues that have been in our agenda in recent years. This is - a big step forward. Very few people believed that Ukraine would open access for third party to the Ukrainian gas transportation system. But we did it. Ukraine fulfills its obligations under the Treaty establishing the Energy Community. According to the Council of Europe requirements our country has adopted a new Criminal Procedure Code. It have also been adopted a new Customs Code, a plan of approximation of Ukrainian legislation to EU standards, priority measures for Ukraine's integration into the EU, etc," First vice Prime Minister emphasized.

He also stressed that Ukraine still faces many questions to which it should give a decent answer. "We recognize the importance of holding parliamentary elections according to international democratic standards. The President and the Government will do everything possible according to their competence to ensure that the elections were fair and transparent," he declared.

Valeriy Khoroshkovsky underlined that Ukraine would be moving by implementing domestic reforms which bring closer our country to European standards. "Only the reforms will make our country strong as well bring to success on the path to EU," he said.