Good governance during the pandemic: EU’s resilience-building in Ukraine

This paper analyzes EU’s role in institution building on local level in Ukraine and the effect on pandemic crisis on it. Ukrainian local governance has received significant impact after the Euromaidan Revolution. Constitutional changes, re-organization of governance including decentralization laws and went hand in hand with a growing involvement of the EU in institution building in the country. In turn in early 2020, a freshly elected president Zelensky began a reconfiguration of Ukraine’s political system.Though local reforms have been limited to few cases and transformation remains limited and non-linear, significant progress has been achieved in transparency and accountability in local governance. In late 2019, the EU launched a revision of the European Neighbourhood Policy to better fit the EU policies to emerging and ongoing crises. The ongoing re-prioritization of towards resilience-building – stronger governance, connectivity and society – growingly re-shaped the pillars of the EU’s engagement with its neighbours, including Ukraine. The EU through its resilience approach pay particular attention to promoting governance on the local level in Ukraine. It studies the EU’s role in small-scale privatization, healthcare and police reform in Lviv, Mariupol, Odesa and Dnipro and how the EU contributes to a formation and sustainment of emerging policy coalitions. Finally, it addresses how the EU’s involvement affected ability of local authorities to adapt quickly to the pandemic.