Editor's Note: The Kyiv Post tracks the progress made by Ukraine's post-EuroMaidan Revolution leaders in making structural changes in the public interest in six key areas: security & defense, energy, rule of law, public administration and land.
The following measures were passed on June 5-11. Parliament is scheduled to work until July 17 after which it will go on a 45-day summer break.
Economy & finance
The National Bank of Ukraine softened restrictions on the money market. The limit for withdrawing money through cash desks and ATMs has been raised from Hr 150,000 to Hr 300,000 per day per client.
Rule of law
In pursuit of reducing the influence oligarchs have in economic and political life, President Petro Poroshenko plans to transfer his shares in the Roshen confectionery corporation to investment bank Rothschild under a trust agreement, he announced during a June 4 State of the Nation address.
“The agreement is almost ready. The idea is to exclude my surname from the list of company owners,” Poroshenko said. Three potential buyerswere conducting due diligence, he said, except for the Lipetsk unit in Russia that “was seized by the Russian Federation.”
OnJune 5, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced the dismissal of the head of the main department of the Interior Ministry in Kyiv, Major General OleksandrTereshchuk, under lustration laws. “Today the head of Kyiv police was dismissed,” Yatsenyuk said. A review of law enforcement bodies and governmental employees continues, he added. According to an investigative report by “Nashi Groshi” (Our Money), a watchdog that monitors public spending, Tereshchuk had built a three-story town house on a land plot that was allegedly illegally allocated.
Defense & security
On June 8, Poroshenko approved several landmark laws. He signed a bill that spells out conditions for martial law, adopted by Parliament on May 12, and cancelled two agreements between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on cooperation in the field of military intelligence and reciprocal protection of secret information.
“In view of the hostile behavior of the Russian Federation, further cooperation between Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services is impossible, since it amounts to a betrayal of Ukraine’s national interests,” the explanatory note said.
The Defense Ministry has been the subject of reform amid the need to improve the military’s capability of defending the country. Volunteers have been accepted to assist the ministry in its efforts. In April, the Defense Ministry announced that it had shipped 39 new Oplot tanks to Thailand to honor a $200 million contract signed in 2011 rather than send them to the poorly equipped Ukrainian army in the east. A June 8 Newsweek article suggested that the contract was honored because ministry officials “had taken a cut of the money for themselves.”
Oleksiy Melnyk of the Razumkov Center think tank questioned that interpretation, saying that — although state-owned –the tank factory wasn’t directly subordinated to the Defense Ministry.
Public administration
Yuriy Terentyev, the newly appointed head of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, chaired his first meeting with business on June 5. Terentyev said the anti-trust agency is conducting 40 investigations indifferent business sectors while stressing the committee’s readiness to bust energy companies that abuse their monopoly positions.
“The state commissioners will be appointed in 10 days,” he said. “In the past, business complained there was no effective dialogue with the committee. I welcome business to resume cooperation.”
On June 5, Education Minister Serhiy Kvit told Parliament that the ministry had closed dozens of higher education institutions due to the low quality of services that was being provided. He added thatthe ministry planned to create a National Agency for Education Quality Control to monitor education.
Energy
On June 4, Parliament adopted a bill aimed to promote competition in Ukraine’s alternative energy sector and eliminate corruption.
The bill brings Ukraine’s subsidized “green” price for alternatively generated electricity in line with average world tariffs and provides equal incentives for solar and wind energy in comparison to bio-energy and geothermal energy.
Subsidized energy prices had been favorable to allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych working in solar and wind energy, according to Yaroslav Petrov of the Asters law firm.
The law also eliminates the obligation to manufacture or assembly the building units of alternative power plants in Ukraine. Lawmaker Oleksiy Ryabchynov believes “this restriction has been misused to create non-tariff barriers for enrichment of certain persons instead of developing the sector.”
Lev Pidlisetskyy, a lawmaker from the Samopomich party, said the law “will deprive (brothers) Andriy and Sergiy Klyuyev, who own ActivSolar, the solar energy company, of an extra Hr 8 million daily.”
Land
On June 2, Parliament adopted a procedure for approving land tenure projects. The government’s cadastre agency said the law introduced a consistent set of rules in the field. While Ukraine has had land management plans since the 1990s, there was no legislation on the matter, the head of the service, Maksym Martynyuk said. “This was nonsense. It gave the State and municipal agencies wide discretion to revoke almost any land tenure project,” he said.
