Why government reshuffles may slow down Ukraine’s European integration

Last week's turbulent government reshuffle pulled attention away from the processes tied to Ukraine's EU accession negotiations. Still, the rotations and restructuring of the cabinet will affect the negotiating process going forward, and the effect is unlikely to be positive.

Two things are clearly capable of slowing Ukraine's path to EU membership.

One is the state's insufficient institutional capacity to fulfil negotiating obligations quickly, a problem that endless government changes only deepen.

The other is limited political readiness to carry out difficult political and legal reforms.

Read more in the article by Liubov Akulenko of the Ukrainian Centre for European Policy: Changes that don't serve EU integration: why constant government reshuffles are dangerous.

Frequent government changes weaken Ukraine's negotiating capacity.

By our estimate, last year's cabinet reshuffle replaced 31% of the heads of negotiating working groups. After the current round of changes, the full scale of turnover can't yet be assessed since ministerial appointments aren't finalised, but it's reasonable to expect that roughly half of the working group heads will keep their posts.

And it's precisely the ministries that play a key role in the negotiations that are being hit hardest.

The Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture is planned to be split into a Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food and a Ministry of Economy and Environment.

The Ministry of Communities and Territories Development is to be divided into a Ministry of Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons and a Ministry of Reconstruction, Infrastructure and Transport.

Such a redistribution of powers means far more than new names and new leaders.

Ministries need restructuring, positions get revised, functions get reshuffled and qualified staff risk being lost along the way.

For the negotiating process, this translates into a loss of institutional memory and slower work, with new officials having to be brought up to speed on a complex set of obligations almost from scratch.

One positive aspect of the latest government change is that the newly appointed deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Vsevolod Chentsov, was involved in the negotiating process throughout the previous period. This means a degree of continuity and institutional memory will be preserved at the political leadership level.

At the same time, the new position calls for a broader focus, shifting from foreign policy and negotiating work towards coordinating the domestic implementation of EU integration commitments.

The experience of other candidate countries shows that government changes and frequent reshuffles slow the pace of negotiations. In Ukraine's conditions, avoiding this entirely isn't realistic. Institutional safeguards are needed instead.

One such safeguard would be appointing a chief negotiator who is a senior civil servant rather than a politician dependent on the cabinet's composition. This model could reduce the negotiating process's exposure to political rotations.

A second safeguard is strengthening the role of the secretaries of the negotiating working groups, who are staff of the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

One of the new deputy prime minister's priorities should be strengthening the Government Office.

The office should have around 100 specialists, or even more.

If Ukraine genuinely wants rapid EU accession, it needs to think not only about political statements but about the state apparatus's actual capacity to deliver on negotiating commitments.