KIEV, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- The Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union (EU) came into the full force on Friday, according to a statement released by the Ukrainian presidential press service.
"It is the first and the extremely important step on the way to return our country to the European family," Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was quoted as saying in the statement.
The comprehensive Association Agreement, which includes a free trade deal and a broad range of legislation and regulation topics, was signed in June 2014 and some parts of the treaty have been provisionally applied since November 2014.
In the framework of the deal, in January 2016, Ukraine and the EU launched a free trade area which removed custom tariffs on over 90 percent of goods traded between the sides.
The full application of the Association Agreement was postponed because a vast majority of the Dutch voters rejected the deal during a referendum in April 2016.
However, in May this year, the Dutch Senate approved the agreement with a condition that there would be an appendix in the treaty, which states that the document is not automatically a step towards membership of the EU, nor does it mean that workers from Ukraine can easily work in the EU.
