Days before the summit, the Ministers of foreign affairs of Member States agreed during their meeting in Avignon (France) that association agreement to be signed with Ukraine will have nothing to do with the association agreements the EU signed with many Eastern European States (from Poland to Romania in the beginning of the 1990s, Western Balkans by the end of the 1990s). Media reported that the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany were strongly opposed to including "Ukraine is a European State" into EU legally binding documents. This was considered a failure of Kuchma-era politician Mr. Roman Shpek, then Ukrainian ambassador to Brussels. He was replaced by Mr. A. Veselovskyy, a more experienced diplomat.