Georgia-EU to sign Association Agreement by June

Georgia’s path to integrating with Europe is being fast-tracked and the country will sign the Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union in June - two months earlier than planned.

The European Union (EU) Commission agreed to speed up the signing of the AA document with Georgia and Moldova. This will happen "no later than June 2014”, said European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso following today’s European Council’s first session on the Ukraine crisis.

Following the EU Commission’s decision, Barroso went onto his Twitter account and said he "was happy’ the authorities agreed to sign the important agreement with Georgia and Moldova no later than June this year.

Very happy we also agreed at #EUCO to sign Association Agreement with #Georgia & #Moldova no later than June 2014.

— José Manuel Barroso (@BarrosoEU) March 21, 2014

Georgia and Moldova initialled their respective AA and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreements with the EU at the Eastern Partnership Summit (EaP) in Vilnius on November 28, 2013.

Shortly after the EU expressed its desire to speed up this process and said it would sign the AA with Georgia and Moldova by August 2014 at the latest.

This decision was announced by European Council President Herman Van Rompuy after a two-day meeting with EU leaders in Brussels on December 20 last year.

Before that, a potential date and venue for signing the AA was considered the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga in 2015.