On July 10, the New Europe Center held a public discussion “2020 goal: will Ukraine succeed in adopting the NATO standards on time?”.

Alyona Getmanchuk, Director of the New Europe Center and Kateryna Zarembo, Associated Fellow of the New Europe Center presented a discussion paper “Ukraine and NATO standards: how to hit a “moving target”?”, which assesses the state of implementation of NATO standards in Ukraine and provides recommendations to Ukraine on how to fulfill the obligations assumed. (Find the abridged version of the research on the “European truth” website – available in Ukrainian only).

The invited speakers included Oleksandr Kumeda, Head of the Department of Standardization, Codification and Cataloging of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Col. Tomasz Strycharz, Adviser on Security policy, NATO Representation to Ukraine.

During the presentation, the analysts pointed out that 219 NATO standards are to be processed within the framework of the Ukraine-NATO Partnership goals for 2018-2020 (with a view to deciding on the feasibility of their implementation, rather than the actual implementation). Ukraine has already implemented 56 out of them. Ukraine has additionally implemented 137 standards beyond the Partnership Goals. In total, 196 NATO standards have been implemented in Ukraine.

The invited speakers positively evaluated Ukraine’s progress in this direction. In particular, Mr. Kumeda stressed that the process of standardization is voluntary and NATO does not set tight deadlines for the implementation of a particular standard. In his turn, Mr. Strycharz told that Ukraine had already made a great progress in this domain and assured that when Poland joined NATO it had the same problems and obstacles that Ukraine faces today.

Pay attention! New Europe Center has also prepared infographics on the state of implementation of NATO standards in Ukraine.

The publication was produced with the support of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation — a Project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation — a Project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.