The European Union has deferred a decision on whether to sign far-reaching trade and political agreements with Ukraine at the end of November.

EU member states had originally expected to make a decision today at a gathering of foreign ministers in Brussels, but over the past two weeks it has become increasingly clear that Ukraine would not be able to provide the EU with the level of assurance it has demanded about its efforts to prevent the politicisation of prosecutions. A decision could now be made at the summit itself, according to diplomats from EU member states.

The issue of ‘selective justice’ – the targeting of political opponents of the government by prosecutors – has proven the most problematic of three areas where the EU has been demanding action. The EU has also demanded additional reforms of the electoral and judicial systems.

“It is good that we have no decision today because means that it is not a negative decision,” Linas Linkevičius, the foreign minister of Lithuania, told an audience at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think-tank.

Linkevičius’s comment underlines how close Ukraine has come to crushing hopes that it would be prepared to take steps that would substantially deepen its relationship with the EU.

Signature of a deep and comprehensive free-trade agreement with the EU – a new and more comprehensive generation of trade pact – would preclude the possibility of joining the Eurasian Customs Union championed by Russia.

The test for Ukraine now is whether it will take steps that would temper the impact of long jail sentence passed after what the EU believes was a defective legal process.

The case involves Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister sentenced to seven years in jail in October 2011 for abuse of office. In prison, Tymoshenko has claimed to have been badly and violently treated, and has developed a problem with her back.

The legal sensitivities of the case have been compounded by the prospect of presidential elections in 2015 in which, if freed, Tymoshenko could emerge as the major rival of President Viktor Yanukovych.

The EU has urged Yanukovych to allow Tymoshenko to receive medical treatment in Germany and to grant her a partial pardon.

Yanukovych has said that Tymoshenko may go to Germany only with approval from the Ukrainian parliament and has not indicated whether he would then be willing to pardon Tymoshenko.

However, last Wednesday (13 October) the Ukrainian parliament refused to allow Tymoshenko abroad. This came just two days after another blow to Ukraine’s reputation, when prosecutors briefly detained Tymoshenko’s lawyer, allegedly for beating his wife.

The motion to let Tymoshenko travel abroad will receive a second reading tomorrow and several of the most important figures in the making of EU policy towards Ukraine will be in Kyiv to urge parliamentarians to allow Tymoshenko to leave the country.

They are Štefan Füle, the European commissioner for the neighbourhood policy, and two European Parliament envoys who have become critical shapers of the EU’s view of Ukraine’s handling of issues of selective justice – Pat Cox, a former president of the European Parliament, and Aleksander Kwaśniewski, a former president of Poland.

Cox and Kwaśniewski have been to Ukraine 26 times in a bid to resolve what were originally four instances of alleged selective justice. Though appointed by the president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, they have become the acknowledged point of reference for the EU’s 28 member states as they assess whether Ukraine has done enough to ensure that the flaws in the legal cases against Tymoshenko and her former ministers could not be repeated.

Cox and Kwaśniewski had originally been expected to present their final report today, just before the meeting of foreign ministers, timing that diplomats said was not optimal.

They brought forward publication to last Wednesday, but the Ukrainian parliament’s vote prompted the two men to say this would not be their final report.

“What is critical is not the capacity to deliver a solution but rather the political will to do so,” they said. “What is indispensable in the coming week is to find that political will, to act and to deliver.”

While the “coming week” was a reference to tomorrow’s vote in the Verkhovna Rada, diplomats from EU member states believe that a decision on Ukraine’s bid could be withheld to the summit itself if that were to increase the chances of a breakthrough in Ukraine.

Yanukovych’s dilemma over whether to pardon Tymoshenko has been complicated not just by the political challenge she could pose him and by heavy pressure from Russia, but also by the state of the country’s public finances.

Ukraine is in the process of negotiating a stand-by facility worth possibly €10 billion with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), backed by the European Commission, to ensure that it can meet its debts. However, the IMF is demanding that Ukraine raise its energy prices, a requirement that could hurt Yanukovych’s chances of re-election.

There are suggestions that, with his eye on a second term, Yanukovych may baulk at the prospect of pardoning Tymoshenko, seek stand-by funding from Russia rather than the IMF and pursue a lesser deal with the EU – the completion of an agreement to ease travel to the EU for Ukrainians. Cheaper, simpler travel to the EU is widely seen as the primary wish that ordinary Ukrainians have for the country’s relationship with the EU.