The Association Agreement provides that Ukraine is obliged to implement approximately 450 EU legal acts (directives, regulations, decisions) till 2025. The report prepared by the Ukrainian Center for European Policy presents an assessment of progress in approximation of Ukrainian legislation to EU requirements and its compliance with the official schedule of the agreement.
The agreement outlines that for the period of 2014 – 1st half of 2016 Ukraine had to adapt 15 EU legal acts in the sectors of energy, transportation, environment and public health. Ukraine also had to adopt a separate policy document – the comprehensive strategy for implementing legislation on sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
The Ukraine’s commitments are distributed among the following sectors: energy – 8 commitments, transport – 3, public health – 3, environment – 1. During the reporting period Ukraine has started to fulfill its commitments in all the sectors mentioned above, but with different speed, levels of efficiency and peculiarities. Currently no single commitment has been fulfilled in full, most of them were fulfilled only partially.
However, the monitoring of Ukraine’s commitments defined by the Association Agreement showed that in four areas within the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, there is a set of commitments that is being fulfilled in advance, namely, in public procurement, in the sector of Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, technical regulations and sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
Officially, the implementation of these commitments is scheduled after the free trade agreement came into force (Jan,1) but Ukraine had started to fulfill them in 2014. Ukraine has adopted the framework legislation in the field of food safety, standardization, metrology and technical regulations.
Such rapid movement was caused by the fact that in 2014 Russia was gradually closed its market for Ukrainian goods. The entrance to the European market was closed because Ukraine had amended legislation that would allow our producers to switch to European standards. In addition, adaptation of national regulation in public procurement in Ukraine to EU standards contributed to the introduction of the progressive electronic public procurement system ProZorro.
However, the results of monitoring shows that Ukraine is not fully complied with any of EU regulation which are defined in the Agreement. Unfortunately, the majority of drafted legislation is still pending in Parliament. The only sector that demonstrated progress in EU rules adaption in Ukraine is energy sector, in particular in the EU directives setting the rules for gas market.
In this sphere the legislation was approximated to EU rules more closely than in other sectors. National gas legislation has been aligned with the Third Energy Package of the EU requirements after the adoption of a framework law No 2250 “On the natural gas market” and a package of related secondary legislation which is crucial for real reform of the gas sector in Ukraine.
However, a full implementation of European standards in energy sector will be achieved only after the full adoption of legislation related to ownership rights in gas distribution networks, creation of an independent energy regulator and completion of Naftogaz of Ukraine unbundling. Changes in the electricity and energy efficiency sector are fragmented and are far behind a schedule that was specified in accordance to obligations of Ukraine under the Energy Community Treaty.
In the field of transport national legislation is adopted quite slowly, braking deadlines of the Association Agreement. Currently, Ukraine has three commitments in the road transport sector (concerning better safety standards in road transport) and transportation of dangerous cargoes.
The Ministry of Infrastructure has developed and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Draft Law No 4683 “On amendments to some legislative acts of Ukraine in the road transport sector to bring them in line with EU regulations” and the Draft Law No. 4374 “On amendments to some legislative acts of Ukraine to bring them in line with EU legislation in the transport of dangerous cargo” that are fully compatible with European regulations, however, until today these draft laws was not considered by MPs, despite the fact that the Ministry had submitted them in time.
In public health implementation of commitments is also proceeding slowly and at some stages – formally. Ukraine has committed to establish a network for monitoring infectious diseases in Ukraine and continuous exchange of this information with the EU authorities. However, decrees developed by the Ministry of Health for infectious diseases have been adapted to the outdated EU regulations. Also during the process of legislation approximation the amendments to the current legislation are not being made, which in future will cause problems with the implementation of adopted decrees. EU recommendation on the creation of the Centre for Public Health is implemented only formally, since the Centre has not still started its operations.
In the field of environment protection Ukraine had to fulfill one commitment on the conservation protection of wild birds. The process of its fulfillment, namely art. 4.2 of the corresponding directive is suspended. Ukraine has started the creation of the Emerald Network on the territories of existing reserves, but this has no relation to the implementation of the Directive, since Art. 4.2 of the directive requires a special regime for “birds’ reservations” throughout Ukraine at the legislative level with special protection of these reserves.
At the same time the Association Agreement contains some program commitments, analysis of which shows that Ukraine has met its request and adopted on Feb. 24 a comprehensive strategy of implementation of legislation on sanitary and phytosanitary measures. However, the current process is not complete, because now the strategy is on approval stage with the European Commission.
Main obstacles
The main problem with adaptation of Ukrainian legislation is a slow consideration of draft laws by the Parliament. One more stumbling block is that the Ukraine – EU Association Agreement was ratified in 2012, thereafter, a significant number of EU directives were replaced by others. This causes some confusion as to which document must be implemented. In this regard, we recommend holding a bilateral procedure for new acts to be approved and formalize the list of new regulations in each area.
Another important thing is that legislation drafting usually passes the Cabinet of Ministers circles of considerations with involvement of sectoral experts but after a draft is submitted to the Parliament the whole process is being suspended even though the commitment deadline has already passed sue to general resistance to reforms by MPs majority and lack of knowledge and political will to understand (very often) difficult issues of the EU regulation.
What should be done?
Ukraine’s commitments under the Association Agreement must be set as the highest priority for the responsible ministries and the parliament.
Institutional weakness of the government authorities and lack of interest of the MPs to dig in and vote for “boring” Euro-integration draft laws has to be overcome by setting the highest priority mode for EU related legislation. A mechanism to elaboration and passing the Euro-integration draft legislation by fast track procedure has to be discussed and developed. For example, there could be a special session day for voting these draft laws or the Parliament could define a concrete time during every session day to consider them.
Lyubov Akulenko is executive director of Ukrainian Centre for European Policy.
