European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative in Ukraine


The European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative, EUACI, is the largest program of technical assistance in fighting corruption in Ukraine implemented by the European Union.
The program was established in June 2017 and was expected to run for three years. It was mainly funded by the European Commission and co-funded by Danish International Development Agency. In 2021, the European Court of Auditors found the EU support for reforms in Ukraine to be ineffective in fighting grand corruption.
WWW euaci.eu𝕏 EUACI_Ukraine

Mission and Aims

The European Union Anti-Corruption Initiative EUACI in Ukraine was created to strengthen the capability of the anti-corruption institutions and increasing parliamentary, civic society and media control over the reforms in Ukraine.
The aims of the program were as follows:
  • improvement of anti-corruption politics implementation
  • facilitation of reduction in large scale corruption
  • strengthening of operational and legislative potential of state institutions in prevention and elimination of corruption
  • increase of parliamentary supervision of reforms, and potential of studying and improving the strategic legislative basis
  • increase of the potential of local governments, public and media which would enable them to contribute towards anti-corruption activities

Funding

The overall budget of the program was 15.84 million euros. The immediate executor of the program representing the Kingdom of Denmark was DANIDA. The project was implemented as international technical aid, according to Contract No 3582–01 from 15 March 2017, under the Framework Agreement between Ukraine and European Commission. It became the first large scale project aimed at fighting corruption.

Implementation

The program was expected to be implemented over a period of 3 years, between 15 December 2016 – 14 December 2019. It comprised three components:
  1. Support of state agencies dealing with the prevention and fight against corruption.
  2. The assistance to Ukrainian parliament implementation of anti-corruption reforms.
  3. The assistance for local government, civil society, and media of anti-corruption activities.

Component 1 Support of state agencies

EUACI provided consultative, organisational and financial assistance to the special anti-corruption institutions in the following 8 projects:
  • IT equipment for The Asset Recovery and Management Agency of Ukraine
  • Technical support for the Regional Press Development Institute
  • Analysis of the business processes used for the electronic tax declarations
  • Creation of a learning working group led by Eric Heldna
  • Assistance in typological research allowing to discover new trends and schemes in money laundering and financing of terrorism
  • A learning visit to Lithuania for the SAPO and NABU employees
  • A visit of the NABU delegation to the Eurojust in The Hague, Netherlands
  • NABU professionals attended studies in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Component 2 assistance to Ukrainian parliament

Implemented projects:
The IACAB was created on 8 September 2017 as a result of the a Letter of Intent being signed between the Verkhovna Rada Anti-Corruption Committee and EUACI.
It consists of the following members: Carlos Castresana, Anca Jurma, Giovanni Kessler, Drago Kos, Jesper Hjortenberg, Daniel Thelesklaf.
IACAB professionals perform analysis of anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine in the areas of investigation, criminal persecution and court consideration of high-profile corruption cases. The experts create reports based on the results of their analysis and provide recommendations to improve the efficiency of Ukrainian anti-corruption institutions.

Component 3 assisting local government, civil society, and media

Implemented projects:
  • Financial support for the project "Local Community Engagement in Anti-Corruption Advocacy Programs with the Assistance of Civic Anti-Corruption Investigations, Supervision and Civic Education". The project is expected to last for one year and will be implemented by the "School of Civic Education" which was created by the civic organisation "Stop Corruption", the Institute of Civic Education "Kyiv Mohyla Academy" and ACREC. During a year a series of training sessions for the activists of "Stop Corruption" will take place; an anti-corruption research and campaign will be carried out in a number of cities.
  • * 26–28 January 2018 – the first module of the "School of Civic Education"
  • * 16–18 March 2018 – the second module of the "School of Civic Education"
  • Support for journalist investigations
  • * Grant competition for anti-corruption investigations
  • * Support for a 5-day data journalism school
  • * Support for the 9th Conference of Investigative Journalism
  • * Training sessions for journalists: "Technologies of Journalist Investigations", "Journalist Investigations of Corruption and Malpractice in Communal Enterprise", "New Investigators – the School for Regional Journalists", "The Correct Ways of Reading Legal Documents", "Video Storytelling: Create a Story the World Will Understand"
  • Collaboration with "Integrity Cities" – an anti-corruption program that is planned to be implemented in 6 cities of Ukraine
  • The Corruption Park

Team

As of 2018, EUACI included both Ukrainian and foreign professionals:
  • Eka Tkeshelashvili – Head of programme
  • Elena Konceviciute – Senior anti-corruption advisor
  • Barbara James – Head of administration
  • Clemence Muller – Senior anti-corruption advisor
  • Bogdan Boyko – Civil society and local governance expert
  • Serhiy Derkach – Anti-corruption investigation and prosecution expert
  • Halyna Kokhan – Anti-corruption and prevention expert
  • Vitaliy Veselskiy – Information technology expert
  • Katerina Bazayants – Finance and administration manager
  • Anastasiia Shevkoplyas – Programme Administrative Associate
  • Volodymyr Solohub – Communications expert
A Steering Committee was established in order to enable common decision making for implementation of anti-corruption initiatives between the Kingdom of Denmark, EU mission in Ukraine and main institutional beneficiaries.
As of 2018, the members of the Steering Committee of the Anti-Corruption Initiative of the European Union in Ukraine were as follows: