During 28-29 of November, The New Europe Center organized the 1st Accession Exchange Forum with the participation of high government officials and leading experts in Kyiv. The two-day offline event was devoted to exchanging thoughts on the accession process, discussing good practices, new ideas, lessons learned, and exploring the opportunities in the relations between European Union, countries of Eastern Europe and Western Balkans.

In addition to creating the exchnage platform devoted to the accession process, NEC contributes to Ukraine’s accession to the European Union by regularly monitoring its progress in implementing the 7 reforms. An ad-hoc collation of organizations led by NEC produces the Candidate Check that is tracking the reforms. Moreover, considering the critical importance of opening of the accession negotiations and the unprecedented conditions in which Ukraine should follow this path, Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of the New Europe Center, and Leo Litra, Senior Fellow, published the discussion paper “Preparing for accession negotiations with the EU: what is important to know Ukraine from the experience of other countries”. The paper studies the experience of 4 EU member states (Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia, Croatia) and two candidates (Montenegro and North Macedonia) and is based on 37 interviews and meetings. As a result, a list of specific recommendations for the Government of Ukraine were presented.

The New Europe Center team has collected the highlights and key messages from the speakers of the Forum at the following link.

Video recording of the Forum is available here: 1st day and 2nd day.

The Accession Exchange Forum is organized by the New Europe Center in partnership with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, the International Renaissance Foundation, the Institute for European Policies and Reforms and the Soros Foundation in Georgia. The Accession Exchange Forum is taking place with EU support, within the EU-funded EU4USociety project implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation.