Ukrainian parliament may adopt 2 bills on ACAA with EU in Feb – Dpty PM
Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Taras Kachka hopes that an Agreement on Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) between Ukraine and the EU will be concluded in the near future.
"Two bills (on ACAA) are already fully ready for approval. Possibly, we will approve them as early as February and move on to concluding the agreement, which will also help sell our industrial products in the European Union," he said at the Export Credit Forum in Kyiv on January 27, organized by the Export Credit Agency (ECA).
Overall, Kachka once again expressed confidence that Ukraine will join the EU relatively quickly.
"Right now, this thesis sounds almost fantastic, but I think we need to prepare for it very quickly. For the government and the authorities, this will mean completing all institutional reforms as fast as possible, which sometimes last for decades, particularly in customs and other regulatory bodies," the deputy prime minister said.
A week earlier, speaking at the Davos Ukraine House on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Kachka said that the biggest problem on the path to the EU at present is the environmental sector.
"The reason is that we discovered that for many years the Ministry of Environmental Protection of Ukraine was a 'zombie ministry': without its own mind, without its own policy, completely dependent on nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and the like. I like all think tanks and NGOs, but in the environmental field you need a strong ministry, because it is about balancing the interests of different industries, communities, municipalities, a lot of balancing, very complex balancing," he explained.
The deputy prime minister stressed that in the environmental area Ukraine will ask for a transition period, because it will not be able to implement the most complex directives, for example, within two years.
"In agriculture, we have literally two elements where, as we see it, a problem may arise," Kachka added.
According to him, the first is minor and very technical, "which is very difficult to discuss for those who are not veterinarians," while the second concerns plant protection products, because over the past three years the EU has sharply banned many chemicals used in agriculture. He уточнил that a rapid transition by Ukrainian companies to new EU-approved chemicals would make them more expensive in Europe, which would hit small farmers, meaning a precise solution to this issue needs to be found.