President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has said that Brussels is aware of the problem of corruption in Ukraine, but notes progress in this matter.

She said this on Friday in Brussels at a press conference, answering a question from journalists about the problem of corruption in Ukraine, which the European Commission recommends granting t EU's candidate status.

"It is the topic, it is the issue that we've always been working on. And indeed, the people of Ukraine elected their government just because they wanted to fight against corruption. We have, of course, seen that over time and mainly in the last years, there was progress in fighting corruption," von der Leyen said.

In this regard, she recalled that even Transparency International's corruption index in relation to Ukraine has been improved. "That is important. You see also that… they progressed again. What is so important? It's the digitalization of processes: because the less you have person-to-person contacts and the more you have digitized, the better you can fight corruption. And we've discussed that intensively when I was in Kyiv with President Zelensky and Prime Minister [Denys] Shmyhal. Prime Minister Shmyhal has very interesting, far-reaching plans what the digitalization of the country and processes are concerned. So there is a venue of the issue, and it should be and is the venue of the issue, but there's also intensive work that is being done. This is just a criterion where you have to improve," the President of the European Commission said.