ADETEF in Ukraine
Ukraine-France: 10 years of administrative cooperation
The Ministries of Economy, Budget, and Sustainable Development have been providing Ukraine with technical assistance for more than ten years with French bilateral and international donors' financing. In addition, ADETEF opened a permanent office in Kiev in 2006. Since then, cooperation activities have gained intensity, in particular in the areas of public finance, taxation, budget, control, and internal auditing. Recently, cooperation has been extended to other areas: energy, the civil service, tourism, public-private partnerships (PPPs), etc. The partnership with Ukraine public administration is conceived in a long term perspective, as Ukraine continues to enact reforms in the wake of the country’s accession to WTO in 2008 and the changes following upon the 2010 presidential elections.
A close bilateral assistance
In the 1990s, bilateral assistance activities first developped in the areas of budget, public expenditure and statistics. Today bilateral exchanges with Ukraine cover a wider range of activities; they are evolving in the framework of eight cooperation agreements signed since 2000. Signatories on the Ukrainian side are the Ministries of the Economy and Finance, the public Treasury, and KRU (since become the Financial Inspection Authority). On the French side, signatories are the DGFiP (General Directorate for Public Finance (Ministry for the Economy and Finance)) , the DGDDI, the General Directorate of Treasury, the Budget department, the DGAFP, the DGCIS (General Directorate for Competitiveness, Industry and Services (Ministry for Economic Regeneration)) , and AFNOR (French Standards Association. AFNOR Group revolves around 4 core competency areas: standardization, certification, industry press and training) .
Cooperation between France and Ukraine has gained intensity in the areas of taxation, budget, control and internal auditing. The relations between the DGFiP-Public management and the State Treasury Service of Ukraine dates back from 1994 with the signature of several cooperation agreements; they are currently based on a 3-year cooperation agreement signed for the 2009-2011 period. The tax division of DGFiP put an official stamp on its excellent relations with its Ukrainian counterpart with the signature of a cooperation agreement in March 2008.
Assistance in Ukraine has expanded, following the change in the Ministries of Economy and Finance and the expansion of ADETEF's areas of expertise. Thus, to mention two examples among many, the DGCIS and ADETEF jointly signed a cooperation memorandum with the State Department for Tourism of Ukraine in April 2009, in the perspective of the European Soccer Championship EURO 2012. The DGAFP (General Directorate for the Administration and the Civil Service (Ministry for State Reform, Decentralisation and the Civil Service)) , for its part, has developed a program of cooperation with the General Directorate Ukrainian of Civil Service.
Growing multilateral activities
In 2004 ADETEF won a competitive contract for a two-year program to modernize the State Treasury Service of Ukraine, financed by the EU-TACIS program and aimed at improving public finance management and putting into place an effective accounting system.
Internationally financed multilateral activity has grown with the support of other donors and international institutions, and includes on program to modernise the State Committee of Statistics of Ukraine with the assistance of a World Bank loan (2008-2010), and another on to support Ukrainian competition policy with aid to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine with EU financing (2007-2009). France has also put into place many EU twinning projects, both alone or in partnership with other Member States, in the areas of competition, transport, space cooperation, air security, standardization, etc.
Three twinning programs are underway:
- Public debt management and medium-term budgetary forecasting (beneficiary: Ministry of Finance), carried out in partnership with Sweden and Hungary;
- Water management (beneficiary: Ministry of Regional Development, Construction and Communal Living);
- Updating energy efficiency regulation, with the Ukrainian agency responsible for energy efficiency, carried out in partnership with Germany.
New economic stakes
Since the last presidential elections in 2010, Ukraine has stepped up its internal reform process. Building an effective system of State management requires assimilating best European and international practice and opens new possibilities for technical assistance between France and Ukraine.
Today, public administration reform has taken on renewed relevance. The country’s accession to WTO in 2008 highlighted the need to harmonise its domestic regulatory framework with international trade practices. WTO membership opened the path to negotiations which should lead to establish a free trade zone between the European Union and Ukraine; the Free Trade Agreement could be signed before the end of the current year, 2011.
In this context, the development of public-private partnerships (PPPs) has become a major topic in Ukraine. ADETEF has signed a cooperation memorandum with the Ukrainian PPP Center, set up by the head of the National Science Academy in Ukraine, Mr. Heyets. The director of the ADETEF antenna in Kiev is a member of the strategy board of this body.
An ADETEF antenna in Kiev
The antenna has a staff of three: the director, Alain Thibault, his deputy, Iryna Ozymok, and the office manager, Lena Arsenyeva. Its regional authority extends beyond Ukraine to the Causasus and Central Asia.
In close link with the headquarter and administrations directorates in Paris, the local team supports our Ukrainiens partners in their search for specific expertise in the fields of economy, budget and sustainable development. Thus, ADETEF has recently established relationships with the State Environmental Investment Agency of Ukraine and the Coordination Center of the implementation of Economic Reform, two newly created structures, under the supervision of the presidential administration. This has created new contacts in France.
Article by Alain Thibault,
In depth, Newsletter 67, October 2011
For more information
In Ukraine
- French Embassy in Ukraine
- French Economic Office in Ukraine
- National Bank of Ukraine
- Ukrainian Ministry of Finance
- Ukrainian Ministry of Economic Development and Trade
- Web-Portal Ukrainian government
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