EU4PFM prioritises supporting Ukraine’s accession to the EU
EU4PFM Project activities in 2024 will be centred around aligning Ukrainian legislation with EU acquis and preparing for the screening process, which began following the European Council’s decision to open accession negotiations with Ukraine.
EU4PFM Team Leader Jurgita Domeikiene announced this today during the opening of the 12th Steering Committee Meeting of the EU4PFM Project.
The event brought together EU4PFM Partner Institutions — the Ministry of Finance, the State Tax Service, the State Customs Service, as well as representatives from the European Commission together with European Delegation to Ukraine and international experts — to discuss the project overview, budget execution, and results achieved in the second half of 2023 and the year as a whole.
First Deputy Finance Minister of Ukraine Denys Uliutin mentioned during his welcome speech that among the main achievements of the Project, it is worth noting the significant progress made with the development of a new IT system for budget planning and monitoring. “Virtually all of the Ministry of Finance and some key spending units are actively involved in this work on a daily basis under my personal supervision. We are currently testing the developed modules and hope to be able to use the system during the preparation of the Budget Declaration for 2025-2027 and the draft state budget for 2025.”
Mr. Uliutin also added that resuming medium-term budget planning is arguably the most important task for the Ministry of Finance this year: “Implementing these changes will require extensive collaboration with key spending units, so I warmly welcome the strengthening support from the EU4PFM budget process modernisation stream.”
Asier Santillán Luzuriaga, Head of Operations Section 1 “Good Governance and Democratisation” of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, expressed appreciation for the successful and timely implementation of the Project and its achieved results in 2023 despite the challenges of the war, and added: “The year 2024 is also ambitious, as the efforts should be focused on finalising Work Plan activities. The Project will continue to support the alignment of the Ukrainian legal framework in tax and customs with the EU acquis. This work will intensify with the upcoming screening process, which the Project will support.”
During the overview of the Project activities, Jurgita Domeikiene highlighted key achievements, including legislative and administrative developments for automatic exchange of information on financial accounts, the introduction of a modern service model in the STS Contact Centre, and the completion of NCTS Phase 5 development, as well as priorities for 2024. Moreover, in this reporting period, the Project finalised its contracts on emergency assistance for the Partner Institutions and concluded its activities.
“In 2023, we organised two offline meetings with the Partner Institutions in the areas of tax and customs in the form of study visits,” Jurgita Domeikiene added. “And finally, we closed this year with the new Contribution Agreement on the Extension of EU4PFM signed by the EU Delegation to Ukraine and CPMA in December, allowing us to continue our cooperation until the end of 2025.”
EU4PFM remains committed to supporting PFM reforms in Ukraine and will focus its activities in 2024 on supporting Ukraine’s preparation for the EU accession process.
The next Steering Committee meeting is scheduled for July 2024.
