Dutch parliament votes against recalling Ukraine-EU association

The Dutch parliament voted by a slim margin to give its government more time to address the concerns of the April 6 referendum rejecting the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. Seventy-one MPs voted in favor of recalling the agreement, as opposed to 75 who gave the government more time, reported the nos.nl news site.

The same day, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it’s the Dutch government, and not the European Commission, that should develop the alternative plan to the current Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. In voting against it, the Dutch people didn’t take into account the “continental scale of the problems that Brussels is trying to resolve” with the agreement, he said, as reported by the Deutsche Welle news agency.

Zenon Zawada: We expect little will come of the referendum since neither Ukraine, nor the EU government, is interested in amending the agreement to accommodate the Russian government. Moreover, the process in doing so would be far too bureaucratic and time-consuming, given Russia’s demonstrated negotiating tactics. In the worst-case scenario, the agreement’s approval will be stalled indefinitely. In the best case for Ukraine, the agreement will be approved by the Dutch parliament in several months, when the clamor surrounding the advisory referendum will diminish.