New Ukraine Govt Gets Mixed Reactions Abroad

What You Need To Know:

✓ Foreign-born technocrats have been replaced by a cabinet of Ukrainian-born ministers, who will now continue to carry out the country’s reform trajectory;

✓ “Ukraine has to continue with the reforms... The EU is in for the long-haul with Ukraine. Because they know if Ukraine fails it will actually damage European security as well;”

✓ Dempsey believes that deep, thorough changes in various sectors will provide indicators that reforms are on their way;

✓ “To have a civil service reform you need well-educated people, well-motivated people and actually paid people that will not be subject to corruption or bribery.”

Ukraine’s newly formed government under Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman has received mixed reactions from experts in the West. The foreign-born technocrats have been replaced by a cabinet of Ukrainian-born ministers, who will now continue to carry out the country’s reform trajectory. According to Judy Dempsey, a senior associate at Carnegie Europe, there is “relief that this particular government crisis has been resolved.”

Dempsey is not sure how Groysman will handle the current situation but with pressure coming from Washington and the EU, there is no turning back: “Ukraine has to continue with the reforms.. .The EU is in for the long-haul with Ukraine. Because they know if Ukraine fails it will actually damage European security as well.”

Dempsey believes that deep, thorough changes in various sectors will provide indicators that reforms are on their way. These include reforms of the judicial system, media, energy sector and the civil service, stressing that “to have a civil service reform you need well-educated people, well-motivated people and actually paid people that will not be subject to corruption or bribery.”

Hromadske’s Nataliya Gumenyuk spoke to Judy Dempsey, Senior Associate at Carnegie Europe in April, 2016 in Slovakia.