The EU, the War and the Reform Challenge: a Decade of Institution-Building in Ukraine

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Nizhnikau Ryhor, Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Speaker: Ryhor Nizhnikau, Finnish Institute of International Affairs

Discussants: Olena Podolian, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Social Sciences, Södertörn University, and Victoria Leukavets, Researcher at CBEES, Södertörn University

Chair: Masha Semashina, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CBEES

Abstract:

During the last decade, Ukraine has become the locus of the EU’s engagement in the neighbourhood. The Euromaidan Revolution, the annexation of Crimea and the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 as well as the Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 posed systemic challenges to the Ukrainian state- and nationhood, which has been accompanied by a steep increase in the Western involvement in domestic institution-building. The pivotal decision of the European Union to open EU accession negotiations with Ukraine only further signifies the EU’s key role as a driver of change in Ukraine.

This talk aims to reassess the EU’s external impact on state- and institution-building processes in Ukraine over the last 10 years. To do that, it presents a new model of EU’s transformative impact in the third countries, which primarily rests on the EU’s ability to facilitate state-society cooperation. While the EU’s promotes change through institutionalized relations with the state and societal actors, its effects on patterns of state-society interactions is often overlooked. This argument is developed through studying strategic interactions between EU, state and society in sectoral cases central to patronal democracy such as coercion (law enforcement institutions) and public finances (public procurement, seized asset management and privatization). Finally, it aims to see how the war has been affecting the EU and the institution-building in Ukraine.

Ryhor Nizhnikau is a Senior Research Fellow in Russia, the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood and Eurasia programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Docent in East European Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute of University of Helsinki. He works on Russia’s and the EU’s policies towards Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus, and studies the institutional transformations and political developments in these countries. He received his PhD in Political Science from Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu.

Nizhnikau was a visiting fellow at the Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek, and a visiting lecturer at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and the University of Helsinki. His publications include EU-Induced Change in Post-Soviet Space: Promoting Reforms in Moldova and Ukraine (Routledge, 2019) and Russian policy towards Belarus after 2020: At a turning point? (Lexington Books, 2023), co-edited with Arkady Moshes.