Methodology

Objective: to assess Ukraine’s progress (or regression) on the path to EU accession

Periodicity: monitoring is carried out on a monthly basis

Target audience: journalists, public officials, experts in Ukraine, the EU, and other countries
interested in independent and up-to-date information on Ukraine’s progress in the EU accession

What do we monitor? The project team regularly updates a database of events for further evaluation by experts. Types
of events:

Actual legislative changes: laws and other regulatory acts that have already been adopted. These are the main
rules of the game that bring Ukraine closer to the EU (or not).

Planned legislative changes: planned legislative acts under consideration, in particular,
those submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, as well as normative acts submitted for
public discussion. They set the future direction, so it is important for them not to
create additional obstacles on Ukraine’s path to the EU.

Agenda: Official statements of intent, adopted strategies, roadmaps,
concepts, proposals, joining conventions and programs, etc. They do not change
institutional landscape, but give a sense of the potential direction of travel, and create
an institutional framework for government officials to act (if they are not yet able to approve legislative
changes in the Council). They create opportunities but do not provide institutional guarantees
Introduction.

The state of implementation: An assessment of implementation based on two components:

EU’s assessment of Ukraine’s progress by sector based on annual reports from the European Commission and monthly expert assessments.

Based on the database, a questionnaire is generated and submitted to experts for evaluation by
using the Rapid Appreciate method. The assessment is made by independent experts on
in six specific areas:

• the rule of law;
• free movement of goods and customs;
• digital transformation;
• social policy and employment;
• entrepreneurship and industrial policy;
• transportation.

Each of the events is rated on a scale from -3 to +3 (-3 – maximum negative impact, -2 – negative impact, -1 somewhat negative impact, 0 – no negative or positive impact, +1 – somewhat positive impact, +2 positive impact, +3 maximum positive impact), and each group of events has weights:

• First (actual changes in legislation) – 0.35
• Second (planned changes in legislation) – 0.2
• Third (agenda) – 0.1
• The fourth (implementation status) is 0.35.

For each event, an average value is calculated based on expert opinions, then for each
The weighted average is calculated using weights and average event scores.
The total progress score for the month is the arithmetic mean of the scores of the areas.

Team.

The project includes a team of researchers consisting of:

a group of curators responsible for the development, calibration, timely updating of the methodology and
creating a database within the defined areas,

a monitoring team of two researchers who collect information on an ongoing basis and
enter it into the database,

experts with specific areas of expertise. Experts cannot be incumbents
civil servants or politicians. If an expert starts a career as a public
official or politician, he/she is excluded as an active expert, although he/she is kept in the database
data as a former project expert.

List of experts