The European Union has stopped aiding Ukraine in terms of several programs, Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, said in a recent interview with Window on Europe, explaining that such programs have been terminated because Ukraine’s current administration has failed to meet the requirements in terms of public administration reform. He says that over the past year and one half, the Ukrainian government has been facing problems in conjunction with this aid.
The Day asked Viktoria Humeniuk, ICPS’s Foreign Assistance Program manager, expert on EU-Ukraine relations, for comment.
“There are two tangible reasons behind this stoppage. Your [political] system in the first place, the way you manage public funds, government procurements; also, the way you manage government aid in terms of central budget appropriations, their transparency and accountability. People in Europe insist that reforms be made in all these spheres. The stumbling block is the absence of government control over budget appropriations in Ukraine. Europe wants Ukraine to work out a comprehensive three-to-five-year reform strategy. From what I know, there was a meeting with Finance Minister Khoroshkovsky who was told that aid in terms of sectoral and budget support would resume.
“Another clearly apparent reason behind the stoppage of financial support from Brussels was the fact that the September 2011 tranche worth of over 30 million euros ended up [on the bank accounts of] Bohdan Kliuiev, the son of the oligarch Kliuiev, which money he used to develop his solar energy plants, rather than the targeted power engineering industry. Europe was amazed and then said, off the record, that they wouldn’t sue, to avoid another scandal, but that they would stop sending money.
“The European Union provides financial aid on a mutually confidential basis, whether or not the recipient is a member or candidate member of the Union. The European Commission has the final say in any such matter, relying on its political and budget findings on a given country. This is precisely what Brussels lacks in its relations with Kyiv.
“EC experts say it will take another couple of years to reform Ukraine’s central budget management system, but that work on this project should start now, so that in the first half of this year the Ukrainian administration could demonstrate its being prepared to assume certain responsibilities and come up with an action plan, with all aims and intentions clearly defined, by way of reform. Europe’s requirements have been spoken and written about a thousand times. The problem is that these requirements aren’t being implemented. If and when the current administration shows its readiness, the situation will improve. I believe that the current administration actually doesn’t expect to receive this aid; that they don’t give a hoot about it, even though Ukraine could get this money as a gift under different circumstances, with no strings attached. Ukraine today isn’t prepared to accept – or deserve – such a gift from the European Union.”
