Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has said that Ukraine should step up the process of its European integration.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, a private international charity organization, announced this in a statement.

"Ukraine is going through the same stages of development of relations with the European Union that Turkey once went through. There are ups and downs in these relations, and the current period is not easy... The main question is whether Ukraine will be able to return to the path of European integration," Bildt is quoted as saying at the eighth Ukrainian lunch conference in Davos (Switzerland).

Bildt stressed that little depended on the European Union in these relations.

In response, Turkey’s Minister of European Affairs Egemen Bagis said that the main problem in relations between the European Union and Ukraine was the issue of trust.

"The two sides should work to overcome distrust," said Bagis.

According to him, the European Union should not only give advice to other countries, but follow it as well.

During the conference, a former Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin said that Russia and Ukraine would strengthen their cooperation with the European Union in the near future.

"But they will move at different speeds," said Kudrin.

According to him, Russia went through a long period of harmonization of its trade and tariff policies with other countries before joining the WTO, as a result of which the country managed to secure better entry conditions than Ukraine.

More than 300 members of the Ukrainian and world political and business elite attended the eighth Ukrainian lunch conference in Davos.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the completion of negotiations on an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union was announced at a Ukraine-EU summit in Kyiv on December 19.

The Ukrainian lunch conference is held annually in Davos during the World Economic Forum.

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the EastOne international investment and consulting group have organized it annually since 2005.