Institutional Reform— a condition for undertaking the future Association Agreement International Conference “Ukraine on the Path to EU Integration: Now and in the future” Vira Nanivska and Yaroslav Snihur 20 May 2011

Signing the Association Agreement will require a number of reforms For this, Ukraine must: – institute the rules and standards that govern in the EU, – and make sure that they function properly. The new agreement with the EU will ensure Ukraine political association and economic integration with the Union

At the moment, reforms are going poorly “Of all our ideas and plans for 2010, we managed to come through on no more than one third. “What do I think are the reasons for this ineffectiveness? Not everybody in this government and in our society is ready for the proposed changes. “Our bureaucratized government machine, which is used to surviving, no matter who is in power, is trying to hang on to its familiar approaches administration, the privileges of office, and the corrupt systems for earning unreported incomes through sheer inertia.” President Viktor Yanukovych addressing the Verkhovna Rada on 7 April 2011

If nothing is done now with the mechanism for reform, the Association will be a fiasco The weakest spot in our reforms is the way they are organized as public, mass-scale social events. There are two approaches to successful reforms in the world: – The totalitarian approach: the political leadership has absolute power and all the necessary leverage to force political decisions to be adopted. – The democratic approach: the political leadership has limited power, parties compete, there are legitimate interest groups, and the technologies of public policy are used. If these procedures are not followed, it becomes impossible to have consistent policies or consistent enforcement.

The main obstacle to reforms today is the country’s unreformed and unaccountable civil service The civil service has not changed since the Brezhnev era—it has only liberalized. Ukraine’s civil servants are not engaged in the reform process, they are unable to translate political decisions into administrative procedures, and they are not actively involved as the intellectual leaders of reform. The government machine has no capacity to transform policy decisions into a social activity that engages voters in the reform process and allows all interest groups to express their needs and to influence decisions. There is no public information about policy decisions, the arguments for adopting them, documents that might explain the decision and would make it understandable what was being done, what problems needed solving, and what the cost of inaction was.

A fundamentally new approach to reforms is needed – how to do the right things in the right way

For reforms to go through, an effective instrument for carrying them out is needed Build capacity to manage reforms in the Government. Present reforms publicly through standard documents and procedures: Green and White Papers and consultations. Determine and publicize: – What we hope to get in the future? – What problems face us today? – What is the cost of delaying solutions to these problems? – What kinds of effective solutions are there to these problems? – What obstacles stand in the way of these solutions? – Who are the key interest groups and what are their positions? Draw up and publicize a clear timetable for carrying out decisions. Include procedures to oversee and monitor the timely fulfillment of the plan.

Following this methodology, the International Center for Policy Studies recently completed a study called “Market Surveillance in Ukraine: Reforms on the way to a European market.” This study presented mechanisms for planning the reforms necessary to adapt to EU norms and standards, using the market surveillance system as a model.