What systemic problems hinder the EU integration of Ukraine's agricultural sector

The European Commission’s Enlargement and Accession Report notes that Ukraine has made good progress in agricultural policy and some progress in the area of food safety despite the war.

If progress were assessed solely based on changes in Ukrainian legislation, purely in terms of the number of legislative initiatives, it would indeed look quite respectable.

However, no matter how many excellent strategies and laws Parliament adopts, without painstaking follow-up work on implementing by-laws, putting them into practice "in the field," and ensuring proper monitoring and control, it’s impossible to speak of the successful implementation of any EU acquis norm or other regulation.

Read more about what Ukraine needs to do for real reform in the agricultural sector in the column by Olha Trofimtseva of the agro-industrial sector at the Ukraine Facility Platform: Legislation changes, the system doesn’t: has Ukraine’s agricultural sector become closer to EU standards? 

The author reminds readers that the backbone of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), from an organisational perspective, consists of three key systems:

– IACS (Integrated Administration and Control System) – the system for managing and distributing direct payments to agricultural producers;

– LPIS (Land Parcel Identification System) – a component of IACS and a digital cartographic system used to identify land plots;

– FSDN (Farm Sustainability Data Network) – essentially a network of accounting data and reporting from farms.

According to Trofimtseva, it is not just the physical existence of these systems that matters, but also the ability to ensure full data exchange between them and to fill them with relevant, high-quality data.

"The foundation of sound management decisions is high-quality, objective data," writes the coordinator of the agro-industrial sector at the Ukraine Facility Platform.

She expresses reasonable doubts that Ukraine’s agricultural statistics system is currently of high quality, since the three systems mentioned above do not yet function properly in the country.

"Another obstacle to large-scale reform is the lack of human capacity, both at the central and regional levels," the author emphasises.

The expert explains that the attractiveness of public service (and this applies not only to the agricultural sphere) for well-educated professionals is currently quite low for various reasons.

Trofimtseva also notes existing problems in rural development, in particular, poor coordination between central, regional and local levels, as well as overlapping functions.

Among other things, this leads to inefficient use of resources.

One of the biggest challenges in the section Food Safety, Veterinary and Phytosanitary Policy is the need for a systemic reform of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (DPSU), not merely "optimisation" at the local level, since it is the main and most important implementing body in this field.

This also concerns building an inspection system, laboratory capacities and monitoring in line with EU requirements – above all, transparency, adequate funding and multi-year planning.

"All of this represents systemic gaps that we will have to address in the near future," warns the coordinator of the agro-industrial sector at the Ukraine Facility Platform.