Interview by Xhabir Deralla | CIVIL MEDIA

Ukraine’s path toward the European Union did not begin with Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It is the result of years of political struggle, institutional reform, legislative alignment and a clear democratic choice made by Ukrainian society — a choice for which the country is now paying an extraordinary price.

In this interview with CIVIL MEDIA, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the European Union, speaks about Ukraine’s EU accession process, the reforms that continue even under wartime conditions, and the persistent narrative that Ukraine has been given preferential treatment at the expense of the Western Balkan candidate countries.

The conversation also goes beyond accession procedures and negotiating clusters. What does Ukraine bring to the European Union? What does its resistance to Russian aggression mean for Europe itself? And can a country fighting for its sovereignty, democratic choice and European future simultaneously transform the Europe it is seeking to join?

For Klympush-Tsintsadze, the answer ultimately comes down to something much more fundamental:

“Freedom is our religion.”

Thank you very much for taking the time to speak to us at a very difficult time for Ukraine, and for the whole world, for that matter. This is a great opportunity for us to learn more about your work as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, but also about Ukraine’s path to Europe and Ukraine’s path to freedom.

When did Ukraine’s European Union integration process actually begin?

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: Thank you very much for reaching out, and thank you very much for your attention to Ukraine. I think it is extremely important that we make sure there is an objective understanding of reality and of what the processes are internally, as well as of the real challenges — challenges that, unfortunately, are not exclusive to Ukraine, but are part of a broader security challenge for Europe as a whole.

With regard to our European integration, yes, a lot of people seem to believe that the sun started rising only recently, that the world is not round, and so on. The fact is that Ukraine’s very active work on European integration began after the Revolution of Dignity. But the process had started even before that.

The Revolution of Dignity took place in 2013–2014, essentially in response to the decision of Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, not to sign the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. This happened under pressure from the Russian Federation, which had promised, if I am not mistaken, about three billion euros for the Ukrainian budget in exchange for not signing the agreement.

But, believe it or not, work on the agreement itself had already been underway for almost ten years. In the meantime, we also had a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement and other forms of cooperation. Once we won the Revolution of Dignity, this opened the possibility for us to sign the Association Agreement and begin implementing it.

Few people, I think, know that it was the most ambitious and comprehensive Association Agreement the EU had ever signed with a third country. It envisaged an enormous number of reforms aimed at making Ukraine compatible with the European Union. Unfortunately, at that point there was no consensus even to include a clause in the document acknowledging Ukraine’s European perspective. That was what was missing. Nevertheless, the scope of the transformative changes we had to deliver under the Association Agreement was absolutely enormous. Only later did other countries sign similar, or even less ambitious, association agreements with the EU.

We began implementing the agreement after the Revolution of Dignity, in 2014. So, by now, Ukraine has had 12 years of practical implementation of the Association Agreement — and already by 2022, when we applied for EU membership, we had accumulated many years of concrete experience in implementing it.

There was also the implementation of all the reforms required for the visa-free regime with the European Union. These included anti-corruption measures, migration policy, and many other areas that were compatible with the EU and represented concrete steps towards European integration.

So, when in 2022 we submitted our application for EU membership and candidate status, and when we received the questionnaire from the European Commission, we already had a great deal of substantive material based on actual work that had been carried out. We were able to draw on all of that when completing the questionnaire.

So, for us, it did not start recently, even though it might seem that Ukraine is moving very fast. I think our experience is actually quite comparable to many of the things that have also been happening in the Western Balkans. For many countries there, the process seemed more optimistic at the very beginning of that path, but then it stalled. For us, for different reasons, it was also stalled to some extent. Nevertheless, in the meantime, we were carrying out a great deal of internal transformation.

What were the most important reforms and processes that Ukraine carried out before receiving candidate status and, more recently, opening the negotiations — on which I sincerely congratulate you?

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: Well, I think you can divide that into certain stages.

If we are talking about the period before 2022, as I said, at one point we had around 144 specific steps to complete, including laws that had to be adopted, bylaws, and the establishment of new institutions. Each step was quite difficult, because we had to ensure that the entire system and infrastructure were in place for Ukraine to become eligible for the visa-free regime with the European Union.

That included the establishment and structuring of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and the High Anti-Corruption Court. We also started the vetting process for judges. We made many improvements in the way Ukraine’s migration service functions, including ensuring the rights of migrants and building the country’s capacity to receive migrants and deal with migration issues properly. At that time, we also introduced what I think is probably the most comprehensive and detailed public asset-declaration system in the world for government officials, elected officials, representatives of regional authorities and others.

I do not think it is easily comparable to anything elsewhere. Very precise and very scrupulous attention is paid to those declarations, including their verification. At the same time, we started another enormous reform that was absolutely critical — and particularly important given that Ukraine is quite a large country — the decentralization reform.

We began transferring powers, on a legal basis, to local communities. But it was not only about powers; it was also about finances, which was critical. Before that, taxes were collected in Kyiv, and then the central authorities redistributed the money and decided who received what.

We changed that approach.

That particular reform proved to be absolutely critical when the full-scale invasion began, because over the years many communities had already learned to take responsibility without waiting to hear what the central government would say or what task would be assigned to them from the capital. People were taking the initiative themselves, including in organizing resistance to Russian aggression at the regional level.

We also started major reforms in healthcare and in the education system. We began transforming education and making it more compatible with European approaches — moving away from an emphasis solely on acquiring knowledge and towards preparing children for life, teaching them how to analyse, think logically and actively use the tools available to find answers to the questions they may have.

That concerned both higher education and secondary education. And I think people also forget the broader context in which all of this was happening. Everybody seems to think that the war started in 2022.

That is not true.

The war started in 2014, with the illegal annexation of Crimea and the attack on eastern Ukraine. At that point, we faced enormous difficulties in explaining to the world that these were not simply some “little green men” without insignia, or local separatists, as Russia was trying to portray them, and that this was not some kind of civil war.

We had to demonstrate and explain that this was, in fact, Russian-backed aggression.

Russia was hiding behind all of those narratives and conducting the war in a hybrid manner — not necessarily openly displaying its military forces, although Russian military personnel were already there in 2014.

Between 2014 and 2022, around 14,500 people were killed as a result of Russia’s aggression. More than 30,000 were wounded. We also had a couple of million internally displaced people — probably the equivalent of several North Macedonias in terms of population, unfortunately.

We had to take care of those people internally, and Europe did not experience this through any major wave of migration. But for us, it was another enormous challenge: how to deal with millions of internally displaced people.

So, against the backdrop of a war that was already ongoing — while the world was responding to it rather weakly — Ukraine was carrying out an enormous transformation. And all of that was happening as part of our European Union integration process.

Can you tell us, starting from the full-scale invasion — although Ukraine has been under attack since 2014, when Russia’s invasion began — what were the most important reforms that Ukraine conducted and implemented from 2022 onward, during this brutal war of aggression? 

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: Yes. Once we received candidate status, there was definitely a very serious geopolitical component to the decision. But I think the whole process, and the change in the EU’s approach, also had a serious impact on the European Union’s vision towards other regions and towards countries that had already held candidate status for some time. It reinvigorated the European integration process for other countries as well, but also the EU’s own readiness for enlargement.

At that point, we received seven specific conditions that we had to fulfil in order to be ready for discussions on the opening of negotiations.

We worked on quite a few pieces of legislation, predominantly connected with the rule of law: the capacity and powers of the Constitutional Court and the way it is constituted; the anti-corruption infrastructure, which had to be further strengthened; and the system for selecting judges, where the process also had to be, in a sense, restarted.

Those were among the seven conditions. But, at the same time, there were many other reforms that had already been underway since 2014 and which continued through 2022 and up to the present.

Unfortunately, there had been a pause in public administration reform, first because of COVID and then because of the full-scale invasion. I think everybody understands how critical public administration reform is. We had been carrying it out before COVID, then there was a pause, and now we are returning to it because it is fundamentally about institutional capacity.

There are also quite a few reforms connected with Ukraine’s economic infrastructure and the way the system functions. For example, we adopted legislation and effectively re-established what is now called the Bureau of Economic Security. It is designed to use monitoring and analysis to prevent wrongdoing within the economic system, rather than functioning primarily as a traditional law-enforcement body.

That represented a major change from the previous logic.

Customs reform is also ongoing and is absolutely critical. Over the years, we have actually developed a very good track record in adopting European regulations concerning customs declarations, economic operators and related procedures. Integrated border management is another enormous task. We started that process, I believe, around 2018, and it is still continuing. If we look at different sectors, agriculture is another important area. We have introduced many measures concerning controls and the safety of agricultural products.

It might seem strange: you are at war, and yet you are still taking care of an entire regulatory system. You have to prepare and train the people working within that system, build new institutions, and create a clear chain of control from the field to the table, as is done in the European Union.

We have also started addressing the transformation of the transport system, although this is proceeding with considerable difficulty, particularly when it comes to the interoperability of infrastructure and related standards.

So these are very different areas. They require a great deal of knowledge, dedication, engagement and effort. It is a wide range of reforms across very different fields. And all of this is happening against the backdrop of an absolutely brutal, exhausting and extremely difficult everyday reality under the bombardment of the Russian Federation.

Yes, indeed. The amount of work Ukraine is doing — carrying out reforms while at the same time keeping the country functioning — is genuinely impressive. Just so our audiences are aware: I am speaking to you as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, but you have been involved in Ukraine’s European integration process and in Ukrainian politics for a much longer period, including at different levels of government. 

Returning to European Union accession: obviously, Ukraine is achieving a great deal under extremely difficult conditions — under heavy bombardment and under pressure from an axis of allies led by the Kremlin, including North Korea, Iran and others. Despite all of this, Ukraine continues to achieve a lot, and this is also why Brussels decided to open the negotiation process. But let us go beyond accession itself. What can Ukraine give to the European Union?

I could name several achievements, capacities and resources that Ukraine, as a member of the European Union, could provide — security, innovation, industry, the creative industries and many others. But, in your words, what would Ukraine bring to the European Union after the accession process is successfully completed?

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: There is one more field I forgot to mention where very important reforms have been taking place, and that is energy.

Even though the Russian Federation has been trying to make our lives miserable by destroying our energy infrastructure, grids and generation capacity, Ukraine still has enormous potential in electricity production, biomethane production, gas production and storage, as well as in interconnection and interoperability with the European energy system.

Ukraine also has the capacity, during certain periods, to provide needed energy to the European Union.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we disconnected ourselves from the post-Soviet energy grid, where we still had the possibility of emergency connections with the Russian Federation and Belarus, and connected exclusively to the EU energy system.

That was possible because everything necessary had already been done before 2022 to prepare Ukraine for that step — not only physically, but also legally.

So I think that, in terms of energy security, Ukraine could become a very serious provider of energy security within the European Union.

You have already mentioned the IT sector, creativity and agriculture. Agriculture is seen by many as a threat because Ukraine has enormous capacity, and Ukrainian farmers may need access to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy. Many are therefore concerned about the possible redistribution of resources and similar issues.

But what I think is being underestimated is that Ukrainian agriculture could actually become part of a very serious chain of common production and common growth within the European Union, increasing the economic capacity of the EU as a whole. Security in the wider sense is also an extremely important issue.

Why do I say “in the wider sense”? Because Ukraine can provide security to Europe not only militarily. Ukraine can also provide enormous experience to European countries in adapting their defence systems, understanding modern warfare and pushing back against many hybrid threats.

People sometimes think that hybrid threats are not something particularly frightening. But if we are talking about information threats, psychological operations, cyber incidents and cyberattacks, or special operations being carried out across the territories of countries on the European continent — and not only within the European Union — Ukraine has enormous know-how in dealing with these threats.

Ukraine could help the European Union become much more resilient. I also think that Ukraine joining the EU would contribute very seriously to the European Union’s capacity to become a serious global geopolitical player.

We can see how fragmented the world has become, and this requires additional unity.

And there is something else that, I think, is very often forgotten. Ukrainians are bringing with them a re-evaluation — or perhaps a reinvigoration — of the values on which the European Union was originally built.

In many countries, those values are now taken for granted. They are often overshadowed by social policies, social benefits and things that people simply assume came naturally.

But they did not come naturally.

Their grandparents and parents built the institutions of the European Union on specific values — values that required protection. And I think Russia is showing us this very clearly today, together with those you called its allies. I would not call them allies. They are accomplices. North Korea, Iran and, unfortunately, China to a considerable extent are also engaged.

We can see that these values are being attacked, shaken and manipulated. Russia tries to present itself as some kind of cradle or bastion of “traditional values”. That has nothing to do with reality. It has nothing to do with genuine family values, real religion, faith or belief.

Unfortunately, the Moscow Orthodox Church operates as a KGB-coordinated and managed arm of the state machinery and has very little to do with actual religion or faith. We have also seen how it operates here, on our territory. Unfortunately, people are sometimes misled into believing that what they are seeing represents genuine religion.

So I think there are many things Ukraine can bring to Europeans and to the European Union — including, I would add, our incredible cultural diversity.

That may not immediately be seen as one of the most important contributions, but diversity itself matters. Ukraine can bring enormous richness across many different cultural spheres.

Yes, indeed. That is another remarkable quality of Ukraine — being a multicultural society that works towards ensuring the rights of all communities within the nation, while also setting an example for many other countries. Ms Klympush-Tsintsadze, what is your message to the societies and people of the Western Balkans, but also to your fellow parliamentarians in Western Balkan countries?

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: First, I would like to mention that we are creating more and more contacts, at different levels, with countries from different parts of the Western Balkans, through various platforms in which we participate together. I very much enjoy this direct coordination and cooperation.

I think we are learning a great deal from each other.

Some people think that it is only Ukraine that can learn from you when it comes to the European integration process. But it turns out that some of the reforms we have carried out are creating interest in some of your countries as well, and there is a willingness to learn from our experience — even though Ukraine did not formally have candidate status for a long time.

As I said, we have been doing this work under different umbrellas and in different capacities for many years.

First of all, I think we have to remember that we have very similar dreams. We have very similar goals. We are part of the same civilization — the broader European civilization — and that means that, together, we have to reunite within a larger European family.

That is my hope, and that is my call to everybody: that our dreams will come true through our common work.

At the same time, I would like to use this opportunity to thank every representative of every country that is supporting Ukraine and that cares about our cause, because our cause is not exclusive to Ukraine.

We are standing up to a huge bully that wants to ruin everyone on the European continent.

That is why we hope you will not grow tired of supporting us — through political support, economic support, military assistance where possible, and energy support, which we need very much right now.

There may, for example, be decommissioned power stations in Western Balkan countries that are still available and no longer being used. There are many ways in which you can help.

Once we prevail over this aggressor — the terrorist Russian Federation — I believe all of us will be safer and better off.

So I hope you will be part of this victory through your support for Ukraine. We are counting on you.

I believe our societies can learn a great deal from one another in all the areas you mentioned, as well as in many areas we did not have the opportunity to discuss today, which are equally important — culture, traditions and many others. I have just returned from Ukraine. I hope to be back very soon, and I also hope we will have the opportunity to meet in person. You are always welcome in Skopje and in North Macedonia, so that we can exchange experiences and help one another.

Ukraine has been fighting for freedom for 12 and a half years now, and it has been on its European path throughout that period. There is a great deal we can learn from Ukraine.

Ukraine is defending its territory, certainly, but it is not defending only its territory. Ukraine is defending freedom, democracy and the right of people to choose their own future.

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze: Yes — and our own path. When we had the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine, there was a huge slogan in the centre of Kyiv that said: “Freedom is our religion.” Yes, we are freedom fighters, and we hope that we will prevail with your support and your backing.

And please do visit Ukraine. I know it is scary. I know that not everyone is ready to do that. But I also know how much a personal visit changes your understanding of what is actually happening in this part of the world. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Thank you. Thank you very much indeed.

Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze
Member of Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine
Chair of the Committee of Ukraine’s integration into the European Union

Ivanna entered politics after the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. She served as Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, First Deputy Chairperson of Foreign Affairs Committee, Ukraine’s Parliamentary Delegation to NATO PA leader (2014-2016) and later on has been Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine for 3,5 years.

Prior to that, she worked in civil society and journalism. Mrs. Klympush-Tsintsadze headed different NGOs, including International Charity Organization “Open Ukraine Foundation”, Yalta European Strategy network, East-West Institute’s Kyiv Center, as well as worked for Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research (UCIPR).

Her journalistic experience includes work for Radio BBC Ukrainian Service – in the USA and in the Caucasus.

Mrs. Klympush-Tsintsadze is co-editor of the book: “Black Sea Region: Cooperation and Security Building”.

Republication: This interview may be republished under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, with clear attribution to CIVIL MEDIA and Xhabir Deralla, a link to the original publication, and an indication of any changes or translations made.