On 8-10 October, the third round of bilateral meetings between Ukraine and the EU took place in Brussels as part of the screening of the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law. Screening is the process of assessing Ukrainian legislation for its compliance with EU law in each of the 33 negotiating chapters. It is a necessary stage of the EU accession negotiations.

Today’s screening session was particularly focused on the Economic Criteria chapter, part of the first Cluster – Fundamentals of the EU accession process.

“We have presented to our partners from the European Commission an assessment of Ukraine’s progress towards fulfilling the EU’s economic criteria, which will form the basis for future negotiations. This is a great work on the assessment of our challenges, which involved Ukrainian and international experts. We have presented our vision of the further functioning of a market economy, Ukraine’s ability to integrate into the EU’s single market, attract investment and implement structural reforms. All this lays the foundation for further work on approximation to European legislation,” said Oleksii Sobolev, First Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine.

The screening session under the Economic Criteria chapter covered macroeconomic stability, the functioning of commodity markets, the financial market, the labour market, education and innovation, physical capital and infrastructure quality, the sectoral and corporate structure of the Ukrainian economy, economic integration with the EU and price competitiveness, and the fight against corruption.

The next round of bilateral meetings on Cluster 2 – Internal Market will take place on 19 November.

Background

During bilateral meetings as part of the official screening process, the European Commission and the candidate country thoroughly 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.