During the public event "Fighting Corruption in Ukraine: Progress Towards EU Membership" organized by the Office of the Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and the EU Anti-Corruption Initiative (EUACI), heads of anti-corruption agencies of Ukraine, representatives of the Government, Parliament and international partners discussed current results of the fight against corruption and assessed challenges for the future.
The main question of the expert discussion was what Ukraine needs to do to prepare for EU membership in the area of fighting and preventing corruption.
According to Viktor Pavlushchyk, Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), the key challenges facing the Agency are redistribution of resources and focus on fulfilling all functions provided for by law. The key priority is to ensure institutional sustainability and retain a team that works effectively and delivers high results.
"Another unprecedented challenge in our work is the need to process declarations for three reporting periods at once, conduct more than 10,000 special inspections, analyze reports of political parties, etc. This situation has arisen as a result of the suspension of these processes due to the full-scale invasion. Therefore, most of the resources will actually be spent on current work. The second priority is process automation and process optimization. Simplification of filling out declarations, improving the quality and thoroughness of inspections. For the society, this will be an indicator of clarity and transparency, and for the state, it will save resources spent on verifying information that the state already has," said Mr. Pavlushchyk.
In addition, the Head of the NACP outlined strategic tasks for the long term. According to him, it is necessary to continue to implement the measures set out in the State Anti-Corruption Program for 2023-2025 (SACP). According to Transparency International experts, the adoption of the SAP is one of the key aspects that positively influenced the fact that last year Ukraine improved its performance in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). The NACP will also continue to focus on assessing corruption risks in various areas of the country's life.
During the panel discussion, Semen Kryvonos, Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Oleksandr Klymenko, Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) and Vira Mykhailenko, Head of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC), spoke about the results of 2023 and the challenges of 2024. A recording of the event is available here.
