CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer and the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Kostyantyn Ivanovych Gryschenko, today signed a document admitting Ukraine to CERN Associate Membership, subject to ratification by Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.

“Ukraine has been a strong participant in LHC experiments and computing over recent years,” says Heuer. “Welcoming a new member of a family is always an emotional moment and I’m really delighted to see Ukraine on the way to Associate Membership.”

"Signing the CERN Associate Membership Agreement became an extremely important stage on the way of Ukraine's European integration", says Gryshchenko. "The full involvement in the advanced European scientific projects and research conducted in CERN was set as a main priority in the field of international science and technology cooperation".

Ukraine and CERN signed a cooperation agreement in 1993, and a joint declaration in 2011, setting priorities in scientific-technical cooperation. In reality, Ukraine’s relationship with CERN dates back much further, principally through CERN’s cooperation with the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, of which Ukraine is a member. CERN-JINR co-operation in the field of high-energy accelerators started in the early 1960s and ever since, the two institutions have formed a bridge between East and West that has made important contributions to the development of global, peaceful scientific cooperation.

Beyond its participation through JINR, Ukraine has been a long-time contributor to the ALICE, CMS and LHCb experiments at the LHC, and to research and development on new accelerator technologies. Ukraine also operates a Tier-2 computing centre in the World-wide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) that federates globally distributed resources to process and analyse the massive amounts of data generated by the LHC experiments.

The Associate Membership of Ukraine will open a new era of cooperation that will strengthen the long-term partnership between CERN and the Ukrainian scientific community. Associate Membership will allow Ukraine to participate in the governance of CERN, through attending the meetings of the CERN Council. Moreover, it will allow Ukrainian scientists to become members of the CERN staff, and to participate in CERN’s training and career-development programmes. Finally, it will allow Ukrainian industry to bid for CERN contracts, thus opening up opportunities for industrial collaboration in areas of advanced technology.