EU calls on Ukraine to strengthen institutional capacity for European integration

The European Union has called on Ukraine to strengthen its institutional capacity to pursue its European integration, according to Acting Director of the EU Support Group for Ukraine, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Katarina Mathernova.

She said this at a meeting of the commission coordinating the implementation of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, according to Ukrinform.

Mathernova said it was important to strengthen the institutional capacity to implement the agenda in the field of Ukraine's European integration. "I understand that there are still many unfilled positions [in the Government Office for the Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine], because COVID really affects us all, but we are trying to strengthen our teams so that they work as productively as possible," she said.

Chairwoman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Ukraine's Integration into the EU, MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze put forward a more ambitious proposal on the form of capacity building. She noted that cooperation between the government and the parliament was a necessary prerequisite for advancing the serious and ambitious agenda that exists today between Ukraine and the EU.

At the same time, there is a need to strengthen the examination of draft laws for their compliance with EU law, she said. "It is possible to consider the possibility of such an analysis being carried out by a specially authorized central executive body for approximation of legislation," Klympush-Tsintsadze said.

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