'New anticorruption agencies can be effective but should not be viewed as a panacea, and the EU’s conditionality should not depend on their performance. The EU should make its conditionality less reliant on technical benchmarks and more political, basing it on an overall assessment of real progress in the fight against corruption.'<blockquote>' “Corruption” is an inadequate word to describe the condition of Ukraine. Since the country achieved independence in 1991, the problem is not that a well-functioning state has been corrupted by certain illegal practices; rather, those corrupt practices have constituted the rules by which the state has been run. Ukraine’s political system is best described as state capture.
Since the Euromaidan uprising in 2013–2014, the new Ukrainian authorities have made positive changes in several spheres such as police reform and public procurement. An alliance between the EU and Ukraine’s other international partners, on the one hand, and civil society organizations and some reformist members of the government, on the other, has helped facilitate this progress. However, there is still a poor understanding in wider society of what constitutes corruption on an everyday level. Moreover, the Ukrainian public is increasingly frustrated and cynical, perceiving that much of the old predatory political class has survived into the post-2014 era and that the fundamentals of the old system remain unchanged.
..
Substantial progress on rooting out corrupt practices will not be made without targeted reform of the powerful institutions that still perpetuate corruption. Rather than trying to fix everything at once, Ukraine’s government and international partners should focus on reform of the justice system, especially the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the courts. Change there needs to begin at the top. Another important goal is to continue to clean up the rules governing Ukraine’s parliament, party financing, and electoral regulations.
New anticorruption agencies can be effective but should not be viewed as a panacea, and the EU’s conditionality should not depend on their performance. The EU should make its conditionality less reliant on technical benchmarks and more political, basing it on an overall assessment of real progress in the fight against corruption.
..
..oth the EU and the Ukrainian government have a poor history of communicating what they have done and plan to do. A failure to communicate well with the public carries the risk of ceding the anticorruption agenda to populist politicians with their own priorities.
..
The public’s perceptions and behavior will change slowly. A shift in attitudes will happen faster if assisted by educational initiatives and more media discussion of everyday corruption, especially in Ukraine’s regions. Oleksiy Chornyy, who opened a new anticorruption agency in Odessa, described in an interview how much needs to change among the wider public as well as at an elite level. “People don’t understand what corruption is,” Chornyy said. “At first people came [to our agency] with any old complaints, such as problems with their neighbors or unjust court judgments. After two months we understood it wasn’t working. We realized that the key issue is the abuse of public office.” Chornyy then tried to enlist members of the public into exposing bribe taking by officials. However, people were reluctant to do so, and “95 percent didn’t want to get involved personally.”
Chornyy’s new agency tried to bring two allegedly corrupt officials to justice, but both cases collapsed, despite strong evidence. In one instance, the anticorruption activist said, a regional transportation manager was purportedly allocating routes for public minibuses in exchange for bribes worth $1,000. The manager drove a sports car despite receiving a salary of 4,500 hryvnia ($170) a month. After being confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, the manager resigned from the provincial administration—but ended up being rehired to do a similar job by Odessa city hall.
The advice of this ground-level anticorruption fighter is something that Ukraine’s Western partners should keep in mind as they consider the bigger picture: a long-term change of culture is required to fight corruption, and in the shorter term the more responsible parts of the media can serve as a weapon that is just as important as the courts. Chornyy said, “We’ve decided to change strategy again and identify cases of corruption and advertise them through the media.”
..
However, another piece of legislation will make the parliament less transparent, not more. On February 25, 2016, Poroshenko signed into law a bill that allows parties elected to the Ukrainian parliament to select after the election, not before, which members from the party list will take seats in the Rada. In effect, this takes much of the power of electing deputies from the public and gives it to party leaders. Several civil society organizations as well as the International Foundation for Electoral Systems have condemned the new legislation. The foundation noted that the new law “can open the door to political corruption.” The EU should speak up strongly to have this legislation amended or overturned.
ConclusionCorruption in Ukraine is a system that was wounded by the Euromaidan protests but has survived and, to some extent, retrenched. Curing a culture of corruption across society is necessarily a long-term process and requires the inculcation of confidence in the rule of law in the wider public. That will happen as the judiciary and the public administration change and through education of the younger generation.
In the nearer term, more success is needed in tackling grand corruption committed by top officials, to create a demonstration effect. The judiciary, the prosecutor’s office, and the parliament in particular are still centers of old corrupt practices. Top-down reform of these institutions should be a priority. The EU is a key player in moving this process forward and should be robust in applying conditionality. If a culture of corruption is allowed to survive and even flourish, this could discredit the reformist project as a whole in Ukraine and its pro-European sponsors.
The formation of special anticorruption agencies has both pluses and minuses. Now that such an approach has been taken, it is important to ensure that these bodies become key institutions in the system, not just appendages to it. But an EU strategy should not rely too heavily on the new agencies. To help tackle a pervasive culture of corruption, the EU should resist the temptation to make its policies dependent on technical benchmarks and should resolutely keep in mind the big political picture.
- Thomas de Waal,
Fighting a Culture of Corruption in Ukraine, April 18, 2016</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
Ukraine’s Hybrid State, April 22, 2016
Marushevska in standoff with bosses in Kyiv, October 3, 2016
'..Ukraine, she says, "is looking toward the future." ..'</blockquote>