Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, and Valery Pyatnitsky, Acting Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, signed today a Financing Agreement to launch a new programme "Support to Ukraine's Regional Policy". The programme will support Ukraine's Decentralisation and Regional Policy reforms with 55 million euros. The EU funds will support the implementation of the State Regional Development Strategy 2020, which was approved by the Government of Ukraine on 6th August this year.

Today's meeting has been a follow-up to the trilateral ministerial meeting on 11 July 2014 in Brussels and the meeting at the highest political level that took place in Minsk on 26 August 2014.

Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy ?tefan F?le and Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk signed a new programme to support civil society in Ukraine. The new programme, worth €10 million, is designed to enhance the role of civil society in promoting and monitoring democratic reforms and inclusive socio-economic development in Ukraine.

We met today with the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatseniuk who informed us about the situation in his country. We applaud the courage and resilience shown by the Ukrainian people these last months and weeks

The Steering Committee of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum (CSF) expresses its great alarm at the growing violence in Ukraine and mourns the victims of the clashes. A key factor in the latest upsurge of confrontation between the government and its critics has been a package of legislative amendments pushed through the Ukrainian parliament on January 16th, 2014, with an utter disregard for the parliamentary procedures and without any public consultations, and subsequently signed by the President of Ukraine on January 17th, 2014

As it approaches its fifth birthday, the Civil Society Forum (CSF) of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) faces difficult choices. So does the EaP as a whole before its summit in Vilnius. This was to have celebrated the completion of negotiations with four of the six partner countries showing that the EaP had indeed brought these countries closer to the European Union (EU).