Kyiv Amends Reform Plan Required for EU Ukraine Facility Funds
On 1 August, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine decided to amend the ‘Plan for Ukraine’ – a plan of reforms necessary to receive EU funds under the Ukraine Facility programme.
The Gaze writes about it, referring to a post by Economy Minister Oleksiy Sobolev on social media.
The minister explained the need for changes by the need to ‘update commitments’ because, according to him, two years have passed since the preparation of the ‘Ukraine Plan’ began.
According to Sobolev, some deadlines in the plan need to be extended, some shortened, and references to specific EU legal acts need to be added and the wording of the steps clarified.
‘The possibility of making changes to the plan was discussed with the European Commission from the very beginning. It is provided for in the regulation on the creation of the Ukraine Facility, and our teams have been working together to agree on the adjustments over the past few months,’ the minister said.
He added that the scope and content of Kyiv's commitments to its European partners remain the same as before.
‘We will continue to implement the plan in accordance with its updated version. The changes will affect steps from the third quarter of 2025, so we are already starting to move according to the new schedule. And we will fulfil some of the commitments faster than we agreed with our partners when the plan was initially formulated,’ the minister wrote.
The new version of the plan is to be approved by the EU Council by the end of September.
Since the beginning of 2024, the main line of financial assistance to Ukraine from the EU has been a programme called Ukraine Facility with a declared value of €50 billion.
Starting from the second quarter of 2024, the EU will link the provision of funds to the implementation of reforms by Ukraine. For each quarter, Ukraine has indicators — certain changes that Kyiv must implement or decisions it must make. And to further legally confirm its readiness, the government has outlined all the steps and deadlines in a document called the ‘Ukraine Plan.’
As The Gaze reported earlier, the European Union was going to reduce its next aid payment to Ukraine by €1.5 billion after Kyiv failed to meet all reform milestones required under the Ukraine Facility, the bloc’s main financial support mechanism for the country.