On October 23-25 in Brussels, Belgium, Ukrainian negotiators will take part in a regular meeting within the framework of the bilateral sessions between Ukraine and the European Commission as part of the official screening of the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law. Such meetings are part of the negotiation process of Ukraine's accession to the European Union.

The bilateral meetings will be devoted to Section 24 “Justice, Freedom and Security”, which belongs to Cluster 1 “Fundamentals of the EU accession process”.

All meetings will be held in a hybrid format. More than 300 people will participate from Ukraine in offline and online formats. The head of the delegation and chief negotiator, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and Minister of Justice of Ukraine Olha Stefanishyna, will participate in the online meetings.

Section 24 covers a wide range of issues related to the movement of people and migration. Ukrainian negotiators will present to the European partners the progress of approximation of the national legislative and institutional framework to the relevant European norms and standards. Key areas of focus:

• fighting organized crime;
• cooperation in combating drug trafficking;
• fighting terrorism and preventing radicalization;
• law enforcement cooperation and information exchange;
• border management;
• asylum;
• migration;
• visa policy;
• judicial cooperation in civil and commercial cases, as well as criminal cases;
• measures taken to combat corruption in the justice and internal affairs sectors.

Presentations and reports will be made by representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Social Policy, State Financial Monitoring Service, National Agency of Ukraine for finding, tracing and management of assets derived from corruption and other crimes, National Police, Security Service of Ukraine, State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection, State Border Guard Service, State Migration Service, Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, General Prosecutor's Office of Ukraine.

Background information

During bilateral meetings as part of the official screening process, the European Commission and the candidate country carefully compare the candidate country's legislation, strategic framework, institutional structures and administrative capacities with EU standards. This is the basis for developing recommendations to the European Commission in each area of the negotiation process.

Based on the results of the screening, the European Commission will prepare a report on the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law for each negotiation cluster. This document will finally clarify the level of compliance and the further scope of work.