"After the agreement is signed, the provisional application procedure will be applied. It means that 90 percent of the free trade agreement could be applied without the ratification process," Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Linas Linkevičius told BNS late on Monday.
Ukraine hopes to sign the free trade agreement with the EU during the upcoming Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in late November. But some EU member states demand imprisoned ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to be released before that, calling her incarceration an example of "selective justice."
EU foreign ministers are still to decide on whether to sign the agreement.
According to Linkevičius, the decision on provisional application "is important for ensuring irreversibility of the process and continuity of reforms."
Asked by BNS whether the EU's decision was influenced by Russia's pressure on Ukraine not to sign the agreement with the EU and join the Moscow-led Customs Union instead, the minister said that "all processes overlap and it's very difficult to evaluate them separately."
"We have always declared that we must show support for the Eastern partners that chose the path of integration," Linkevičius said.
Diplomatic sources told BNS that Britain had been against provisional application for a long time as the country did not want to create a precedent of bypassing national governments.
Linkevčius refused on Monday to comment on positions of separate member states.
Lithuania is holding the rotating EU presidency in the second half of this year.
