Deregulation: how things changed for businesses in 2025

In 2025, the Ministry of Economy, Environment, and Agriculture of Ukraine focused on deregulation, which has a measurable effect on businesses: it reduces excess requirements, simplifies procedures, and shifts public oversight to a risk-based model. These are systemic changes, rather than isolated decisions.

“Deregulation is not about lowering standards, but changing the approach. We are removing unnecessary barriers where they do not add security, while making the rules more understandable and predictable for business. Instead of a punitive model, we are building a partnership-based, service-oriented one,” said Oleksii Sobolev, Minister of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine.

Thus, in 2025, the findings of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Deregulation were implemented: the Government abolished 205 instruments of state regulation of business and submitted a draft law to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to abolish yet another 63.

The basis for deregulation decisions was, in particular, data from businesses. Signals were received through the Pulse platform, business associations, and during direct meetings with entrepreneurs in the regions. This information is consolidated in the Business Issues Dashboard, a tool that allows users to see systemic regulatory barriers, identify priorities, and bring them to a regulatory decision.

This approach has made it possible to eliminate a number of problems that affected the work of enterprises.

In particular, regulatory conflicts that created risks of production stoppages and contract breaches were eliminated; unreasonable technical requirements that led to unnecessary costs for businesses were abolished; decisions were made for the forestry and woodworking industries, taking into account EU requirements; paperless procedures were launched, ranging from electronic checks to the digitization of certain government services; and the elimination of duplicate technical controls for industrial equipment was initiated.

A practical tool for implementing deregulation became eDozvil (ePermit), a digital service for obtaining permits and licenses online. In 2025, more than 17,000 applications for declarations of material and technical resources were submitted through it, with more than 7,000 of them submitted through the Diia app. The confirmed economic effect exceeded UAH 13 million. A veterinary license with AI-verification of applications was also launched, helping to reduce the number of errors in documents, but not making decisions on behalf of the state.

Beta testing has begun for licenses for the circulation of narcotic drugs and precursors.

“The Pulse and Deregulation Dashboard make it possible to see business problems on a large scale and work with them systematically. This allows barriers to be removed not declaratively, but through concrete decisions,” said Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine Oleksandr Tsybort.

In 2026, the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture plans to continue implementing risk-based supervision, expand digital and paperless procedures, and gradually add new services to eDozvil as the regulatory framework and IT solutions become ready. The priority remains immutable — decisions based on data that deliver tangible results for the business.