Ukraine's Reform Agenda
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Transcript Ukraine’s Reform Agenda: Shaping the Future Oleksiy Honcharuk Prime Minister, Ukraine Chair: Robert Brinkley Chairman, Steering Committee, Ukraine Forum, Chatham House 21 November 2019 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery.© The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2019. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chairman: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Ukraine’s Reform Agenda: Shaping the Future Robert Brinkley Well, a very warm welcome, everybody, to Chatham House this evening, especially to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Oleksiy Honcharuk, who’s here for the first time, I think. If I can just introduce myself. I’m Robert Brinkley. I Chair the Ukraine Forum here at Chatham House, which we setup in the middle of 2015 to discuss and pay attention to Ukraine, on its own merits, not as seen through the eyes of other states. And we’re going to have another all-day conference on Ukraine, with a slightly Dickensian title of Ukraine, Great Expectations here in London, here in Chatham House on Thursday the 5th of December. This meeting is on the record and is being livestreamed, and you can, if you wish, comment by Twitter, using the #CHEvents and @CHUkraineForum. But please make sure now that your mobile phones are turned to silent. Today is the sixth anniversary of the start of the Revolution of Dignity or the Euromaidan, which was a real watershed event. The modern history of Ukraine divides into before or after that revolution, and just this year, in 2019 in Ukraine, the people of Ukraine elected a new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, who had no previous political experience, and in a free and fair election, he won 73% of the votes. 73%, so, Ukraine’s neighbours, please take note. The people of Ukraine then elected a new Parliament, giving the President’s Party, Servant of the People, an absolute majority of seats, and this is the first time that that has happened, since Ukraine’s independence in 1991. So there’s been a change of generation in power in Ukraine, although this may tell you more about me than it does about the new generation in Ukraine. The average age of members of Parliament is now 41 years, that’s seven years younger than in the previous Parliament. The average age of the Cabinet of Ministers is 39, so it is fitting that the new Prime Minister, Oleksiy Honcharuk, is at 35-years-old, the youngest Prime Minister in independent Ukraine. He is a Lawyer, who spent more than ten years in legal practice. He won a reputation as a strong fighter for the rights of the business community. From 2015, he headed the Better Regulation Delivery Office, a non-governmental organisation, and in that capacity, he stimulated a veritable bonfire of the regulations, some 1,000 regulations were cancelled. He was also an external Advisor to First Deputy Prime Minister, Stepan Kubiv, who was responsible for Economic Development and Trade. The Prime Minister is going to speak to you for about 15 minutes and then take questions, and this meeting will finish at 8 o’clock. Prime Minister [applause]. Oleksiy Honcharuk Ladies and gentlemen, the Ambassador Brinkley, thank you very much for such honour to speak to you. I was informed that in this auditorium, there are a lot of friends of Ukraine, is it true? [Applause] It’s a very good idea to speak with the friends in London. If you’ll be so kind to allow me to use some notes because it was my – it will be my first big speech in English, so I will use it sometimes. First of all, for us, it’s a very special day because six years ago, I was Euromaidan with a lot of people, with my friends and we fight for European values. And six years ago, Ukraine’s European path was chosen by a million of people on this Euromaidan and for us, it was the Revolution of Dignity. And now, as you see, I’m honoured to lead the new Government and you can be sure that we will continue this direction, Ukraine will move into the Europe, into the United Standards, based on our values, of course. But this choice didn’t come without a price, and you know about it, and Russia occupied Donbass and annexed Crimea, and we still have war in our East lines. Russia is imposing aggression in all spheres, and President Zelensky is doing his best to bring some peace into these lives. And my first message is that, from my point of view, it’s this conflict, this situation is not an issue only for Ukraine, it’s an issue, it’s a challenge, big challenge for all the world, and it’s very important for all world order. 3 Ukraine’s Reform Agenda: Shaping the Future Of course, we in Ukraine, have a lot of different things to be done and I call it our homework and I will try to describe some ideas, what we are going to do next, in the coming years, in our government. First of all, of course, we should create some level playing field. It’s very important for attracting investments and Ukraine needs more investments, it’s true. We will start – we have already started from our Tax and Customs Services. Right now in Ukraine, the Head of the State Tax Service and State Customs Service are young, high professional and very good people, without any vested interests behind. And I believe I am sure that they will create some level playing field, in the sense of some tax regulations and customs regulations. Tax reform is important to ensure clear rules for business, it’s absolutely understandable, that’s why I’m speaking about it mainly, as about priority. The second very important priority for us is digitalisation. It’s absolutely understandable that in the modern world in the 21st Century, the government, the state just wouldn’t be efficient without innovations, without ITs. In Ukraine, we have a great IT spheres, a lot of very highly talented people in this sphere, and we are going to, and we already attracted them into our government, into our team. We have very strong and very qualified team – IT team, IT – a lot of actually, IT teams inside our government. We need to bring some, to create some efficient and good solutions. We need a good data, and frankly speaking, we still have not enough data to do it. So, right now we are working on collecting some data and connecting and gathering all our registers, databases and so on and so forth, to make our state more efficient. We have – we still have, in Ukraine, a lot of post-Soviet barriers, limits, and absolutely doubtless we should cancel them. I speak, first of all, about land moratorium. I know that the Land Reform is a very complicated topic in our society, but we are very – we are standing on the position that we should provide this reform, first of all, and nearest – in coming months. It’s a very important signal, not only because the Land Reform, from my point of view, is a signal to all over the world that in Ukraine, the real – the complicated reforms could be provided. It could happened. We have a lot of different limits in some, and other spheres. For example, we have a lot of limits, if we’re speaking about the movement of capital. We have a lot of limits in our labour regulations, because they was created – they were created in the middle of last century in the Soviet Union and of course, it’s absolutely unacceptable to keep all these rules in 21st Century. We should simplify them and we are ready to simplify them. One more important topic for Ukraine of course, is the corruption and we are ready to fight against corruption and we already do it. We will start from decreasing the level of influence and participation of our state, of our government and economy, and we are ready for the big privatisation. We already prepared more than one – 500 different assets to be sold, to be moved into some efficient owners next year. We have very good professional, a young talented Manager in our State Property Fund, this is the state body, main state body in Ukraine are responsible for big privatisation, that’s why I haven’t any doubts that the big privatisation is possible now in Ukraine. Another issue is the monopolies. Of course, monopolies are – it’s very bad for fair competition. Energy sphere and infrastructure sphere has a lot of monopolies right now in Ukraine and the need of reform in the energy sector is maybe one of the most reform we are going to provide, next in coming months.