Press release

Launch of a CEPS-led research and policy advice project on the EU’s Association Agreements and DCFTAs with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia

supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)

This major three-year project, launched in April 2015, aims at clarifying the legal, political and economic implications of three Association Agreements and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTAs) with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. The agreements are long and technical legal texts, which cannot be ‘read like a book’. While some simplified information documents are being produced by the EU, the project has two major objectives:

  • To produce a comprehensive while compact Handbook for each of the three country cases. The Handbooks, to be published after a first year of work in English and the languages of the three states,will explain in readily understandable and concrete terms what the legal commitments undertaken amount to,and describe also the challenges of implementation for public and private sectors.
  • To analyse selected ‘hot topics’, both in the first year in parallel with the Handbooks, and on a larger scale in years 2 and 3. The ‘hot topics’ will be issues related to the agreements that are of priority concern to the three states. The outputs may range in scale between short commentaries on topical questions through to in-depth studies on sectors where the agreements are particularly complex or most challenging for their implementation.

The agreements should help shape to a considerable degree the political and economic reform agendas of the three states, alongside important contributions being made by the international financial institutions (especially the IMF, World Bank, EBRD) in their respective spheres of competence, and most fundamentally the evolving domestic political agendas of the three states.

The project will be conducted in close cooperation with the three governments, the EU institutions and Sida. Although the project has its three country pillars, the content of the agreements are very similar and often identical, which means that the work programme will be an integrated whole, with the intention of sharing the learning experiences of the three states.

First missions by the CEPS team were made to Kyiv, Chisinau and Tbilisi during 18 April to 1 May, during which meetings were held with key government officials, the EU Delegations and Swedish embassies, business representatives and journalists.

The project is led by:

  • The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) in Brussels: team leaders Michael Emerson and Steven Blockmans,

In partnership with:

  • The Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER) in Kyiv: team leaders Igor Burakovsky and VeronikaMovchan
  • Expert-Grup in Chisinau: team leader Denis Cenusa
  • Reformatics in Tblisi: team leader Tamara Kovziridze.

Press contact: Marco Incerti +32 (0) 2 229 3970 / +32 (0) 485 485 435

Olga Sarrado +32 (0) 2 229 3928 / +32 (0) 488 878 815