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On the 26 of November, the Institute of World Policy presented its research “How Could the EU Accelerate Reforms in Ukraine?”The key findings were presented by Sergiy Solodkyy, First Deputy Director of the Institute of World Policy, and Vitalіy Sharlay, expert of the Reanimation Package of Reforms. This policy brief is based on numerous interviews with state officials, IWP’s expert survey, and nationwide opinion poll.

To download the full publication, please, click here.

Our research is a material for discussion, so we invite Ukrainian and foreign experts to express their comments and observations. The final version of policy brief will be published later.

After the presentation, invited government officials, diplomats, and experts assessed the current level of the EU assistance to reforms in Ukraine, discussed the expectations of various stakeholders, and developed some recommendations for decision-makers.
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Alyona Getmanchuk, Director, Institute of World Policy, Olena Tregub, Director of the International Department, the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine, Sergiy Solodkyy, First Deputy Director, Institute of World Policy and Vitaliy Sharlay, Expert of public policy analysis, Reanimation package of reforms.
“We were planning to carry out very short document like 3-6 pages recommendations for the European Union how to accelerate the attempts of Ukrainian authorities to implement reforms. While we were carry out the work on the developing of this document, we interviewed a lot of representatives of the Ukrainian government and EU experts. 65 people were participating in this project and a lot of them are present today on our presentation. I will be happy to hear your comments and common thoughts today.
The strong side of our survey is that absolutely representative. My colleagues evaluate the involvement of the EU in the reforms and they also express their expectations what would accelerate the implementing of changes in Ukraine as a part of European Union.
This paper has a discussion nature, and we are going to hear all the comments and than we are going to reflected them in the document as well. We understand and we always have herd from the EU that first of all you should not request something from the EU and you have to demonstrate some ownership of the reforms in Ukraine. This is the task for Ukrainians themselves. With the help of the international community and in particular EU our reform movement could have been accelerated.
We also give the evaluation of the support that EU gives today to certain segments of implementing reform: political pressure, financial assistance, support of the civil society and we also give some comments of this support. We evaluate the actions or lack of those of the Ukrainian government. We were trying to be absolutely objective in describing this aspects because we don`t believe that those who are saying that the government doesn`t do anything are right. But we have to be critical because reforms could have been implemented faster”, – Alyona Getmanchuk told some secrets of the inside kitchen.
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Andrew Hill, Head of Cooperation, Delegation of the European Union
“We are aware of all coordination issues. We discuss them internally, with government officials, with our colleagues in the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, and with donors. We can assume that in most of these areas, we see progress and we continue developing a plan in cooperation with the Government of Ukraine. The process of reforms should proceed in partnership with the donors and government institutions; however, the government should set its priorities in order to coordinate the reforms. The donors, in turn, should be flexible and committed to supporting those reforms.

I would like to stress three main points. First, is the donors’ authority. Clearly, the initiative for reforms should come from Ukrainian side, i.e. the Government and civil society. The role of the European partners is to support those changes. We will continue working in various directions. Still, there is a certain limitations context, as Ukraine is an independent and sovereign state. The European Union does not have aid model suitable for any case.

Furthermore, mechanisms matter, not only the institutions. There are different mechanisms, from large scale budgetary aid and microfinance support up to technical assistance. The more flexible budgetary aid is based on the needs of each sector and is developed together with government institutions responsible for the respective area. There are always possibilities to change certain parameters, and we discuss these issues with government representatives. We base our support on specific terms. The “more for more” approach is becoming more and more efficient in our routine. Let’s take the financial aid tranches as an example. They are based on terms of the International Monetary Fund, as well as on the direction towards pushing reforms in certain sectors.

Last, but not least, is coordination. Surely, coordination between the National Reforms Council and other agencies and institutions is the main obligation of the Government. Today, we see significant progress in this direction. The European Union helps the Government in harmonizing the priorities for reforms and monitoring implementation of those reforms. Nevertheless, we are not only monitoring the reforms, but also looking at practical measures required for supporting specific reforms. The European Union often lacks vision, and some international donors work more efficiently. The EU has a complex bureaucratic structure, in particular, due to large number of monitoring mechanisms, and also an insufficiently refined system. Still, we possess long-term crisis strategies for specific areas, which were approved in cooperation with the Government of Ukraine. However, despite those strategies, long-term programs should be developed with various donors in order to avoid contradictory decisions; those programs should be coordinated in cooperation with the Government, which in turn should coordinate that activity with the donors,” said Andrew Hill in his speech
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Kalman Mizsei, Head of the European Union Advisory Mission for Civilian Security Sector Reform in Ukraine, Jana Shindelkova,Special Envoy for Eastern Partnership, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic and Pavel Buchek, Deputy Head of Mission of the Czech Republic Embassy to Ukraine
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On the presentation the Institute of World Policy used the TweetBeam for more comfortable sharing the own thoughts and comments among the participants.
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Dmytro Shulga, Director of the European Initiative program of International Renaissance Fundation.
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Daria Kalenyuk Executive Director of the Anticorruption Center
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Volodymyr Fesenko, Head of the Center of Applied Political Studies “Penta”
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This report was prepared within the project of the Institute of World Policy “New European Policy: Filling the Information Gap”.
This project is implemented under Ukraine National Initiatives to Enhance Reforms (UNITER) program, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Pact Inc. IWP also expresses its gratitude to International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), Think Tank Fund (TTF), and Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine (SIDA) for conducting the research.