EU Confident Ukraine Will Defend Its Interests in Minerals Deal with US

The European Union understands that the preliminary draft of the Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement contained some provisions incompatible with EU law and therefore unacceptable to Ukraine, but believes that the Ukrainian authorities will be able to agree on a favourable version for Ukraine. This was announced at a briefing on 15 April in Brussels by European Commission spokesman Guillaume Mercier.

The Gaze reports on this with reference to the European Pravda.

Mercier noted that the EU believes that during the negotiations with the US on the minerals agreement, Ukraine will be able to ensure that the text meets its interests.

‘Based on what we have seen in the past, we welcome President Zelenskyy's statement that some provisions (of the minerals agreement) were incompatible with EU law and that these conditions would not be acceptable to Ukraine,’ the European Commission spokesman said.

‘We believe that the Ukrainian authorities will negotiate a draft agreement in the interests of Ukraine,’ he added.

On 11 April, during technical consultations on the minerals agreement in Washington, the Ukrainian delegation handed over proposals prepared by Kyiv to the US side.

However, the prospects for a breakthrough after the 11 April meeting can be described as slim, given the ‘antagonistic’ atmosphere.

As The Gaze reported earlier, according to President Zelenskyy, there is already an updated draft of the subsoil agreement with the US. It is a completely different document compared to the previous ones, but it contains points that Ukraine had previously rejected.