European integration progress index is a signal point of detection of problems of implementation of economic reforms

On October 2, 2015, a press conference “Index of European Integration Progress: measuring economic reforms in the regions of Ukraine in the context of implementation of the Association Agreement with the EU” was held at the Expert Opinion Club “Expert Thought”.

Recall that in June 2014, Ukraine signed an Association Agreement with the European Union. As part of its economic component since January 2016, an in -depth and comprehensive free trade area (PVZVT) is officially implemented in the territory of Ukraine. Since the signing of the Association Agreement, our country has been tasked with reforming in various spheres of public life, including economic. This causes an urgent need to evaluate the qualitative and quantitative results of these reforms.
The purpose of the event in Chernihiv was to familiarize the public with the project “Promotion of the Visegrad Four countries in the evaluation of economic reforms of the regions of Ukraine in the conditions of integration into the EU”, which is intended to satisfy the request for the results of objective evaluation of economic reforms in our country using a new -developed state.
The Polissya Fund of International and Regional Research was the organizer of the press conference.
During the eventProject Manager Boris UvarovHe spoke about his purpose and main tasks.

In particular, he noted that the project is implemented with the support of the International Visegrad Foundation (Slovakia) in partnership with the Center for Slovak Foreign Policy Research (Slovakia), the International Center for Democratic ICDT (Hungary), the Polish-Ukrainian Foundation of PAUSI (Poland) and the Association)
The period of implementation of the project consists of 6 stages and provides active cooperation with the partnership network “Association of Regional Analytical Centers” for conducting a number of measures to assess the impact of economic reforms on the socio-economic situation of all regions of Ukraine in the context of EU integration. Experts of the Association of Regional Analytical Centers are currently conducting a relevant study in the Ukrainian regions in accordance with the methodology developed within the project.
In general, the project should help evaluate and predict the possible advantages and disadvantages for the Ukrainian regions of the process of European integration. Also, thanks to the specialized study of the project started in the framework of the project, it is possible to monitor the dynamics of economic reforms in the regions of Ukraine and in the future, since 2014. The benefit of the project is that the results of this study can be used by regional authorities and regional development agencies to adapt local business to European economic standards. In addition, the project should facilitate the institutional development of the civil society of Ukraine by strengthening the network of regional analytical centers, as well as to identify the most effective ways of bringing the Ukrainian economy closer to the economic order of European countries after the introduction of a free trade area with the EU.

Maxim Koryavets, Polissya Fund ManagerHe informed that there is currently an active stage of the project research, on the basis of which an analytical collection will be published in November, which will include all the results. The methodology, which measures the European integration progress index, was developed by experts from the Chernihiv National Technological University in cooperation with experts of the Polissya Fund, based on the recommendations obtained from European project partners. The team of scientists from March to June this year carried out large-scale analytical work and identified more than 90 indicators, which will be assessed by the reform of the economy, as well as which will be taken into account in the construction of the index. From June to September, appropriate detailed technical tasks for each area were developed and the process of their implementation was launched. The completion of the project is marked by the International Conference in Kyiv.
“The structure of the European integration progress index is clearly correlated with the sections of the economic part of the Association Agreement (PVZVT). Using the Euro integration progress index, we will be able to track the dynamics of economic reforms in Ukraine and make the ranking of regions by the level of successful implementationTatiana Zosimenko – project expert, teacher of CNTU.

The participants of the presentation emphasized the great practical value of this project, because its results will be able to monitor which sphere of economy in each region of the authorities should pay special attention, and public organizations and indifferent citizens – to control the implementation of local governments.

The project “Promotion of the Visegrad Four countries in the evaluation of economic reforms of Ukraine in the context of integration into the EU” is implemented by the Polissya Fund (Hungary),Fundby the Ukrainian-Polish cooperation by PAUUCI (Poland) and the Association of Analytical Centers for open society PASOS (Czech Republic)