Changes that don't serve EU integration: why constant government reshuffles are dangerous

21.07.2026, 13:06 eurointegration.com.ua

Last week's turbulent government reshuffle pulled attention away from the processes tied to Ukraine's EU accession negotiations. Still, the rotations and restructuring of the cabinet will affect the negotiating process going forward, and the effect is unlikely to be positive.

Two things are clearly capable of slowing Ukraine's path to EU membership.

One is the state's insufficient institutional capacity to fulfil negotiating obligations quickly, a problem that endless government changes only deepen.

The other is limited political readiness to carry out difficult political and legal reforms.

Both have been widely discussed recently, particularly in connection with the failure to implement the Kachka-Kos plan.

It's important to understand that this is not the personal initiative of a former deputy prime minister, nor a standalone political project. Most of its provisions stem directly from Ukraine's official commitments within the EU negotiating process.

It concerns above all the interim benchmarks in Chapter 23 (Judiciary and Fundamental Rights) and Chapter 24 (Justice, Freedom and Security) within the Fundamentals cluster. Once the cluster is formally opened, Ukraine will be formally required to meet these benchmarks.

By our count, Chapters 23 and 24 together contain 85 interim benchmarks. The Kachka-Kos plan covers only 16 of these,

roughly 19% of all obligations under the Fundamentals cluster.

In other words, the plan doesn't even reach a quarter of the total work Ukraine must complete under just these two key negotiating chapters. And beyond the interim benchmarks, closing benchmarks are still to come.

The Kachka-Kos plan is really just a short list of tasks that the EU, for various reasons, identified as the most urgent at this stage.

At the same time, Ukraine publicly insists on wanting to join the EU as quickly as possible, and that's a reasonable position. The longer the negotiating process drags on, the less predictable it becomes. On the EU side, the risk grows that political shifts in key capitals, including the rise of right-wing populists, could derail the process.

On the Ukrainian side, it becomes harder to sustain public and political motivation for difficult reforms when the date of accession remains undefined.

But fast accession is impossible without fast delivery on commitments. Independent assessments by civil society organisations put implementation of the Kachka-Kos plan at around 15%.

Measured against the full set of interim obligations in Chapters 23 and 24, that's no more than 3% of the total workload.

This pace doesn't match the declared ambition of rapid accession. For comparison, Albania needed roughly two years to complete its interim tasks under the Fundamentals cluster, while Montenegro took around 11.

Ukraine needs to answer honestly: at our current reform speed, what pace can we actually expect?

This brings up a separate set of problems tied to institutions and appointments.

Frequent government changes weaken Ukraine's negotiating capacity.

By our estimate, last year's cabinet reshuffle replaced 31% of the heads of negotiating working groups.

After the current round of changes, the full scale of turnover can't yet be assessed since ministerial appointments aren't finalised, but it's reasonable to expect that roughly half of the working group heads will keep their posts.

And it's precisely the ministries that play a key role in the negotiations that are being hit hardest. The Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture is planned to be split into a Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food and a Ministry of Economy and Environment.

The Ministry of Communities and Territories Development is to be divided into a Ministry of Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons and a Ministry of Reconstruction, Infrastructure and Transport.

Such a redistribution of powers means far more than new names and new leaders. Ministries need restructuring, positions get revised, functions get reshuffled, and qualified staff risk being lost along the way.

Something similar already happened after the reorganisation of the former Ministry of Environmental Protection, when the system lost a substantial share of experienced specialists.

For the negotiating process, this translates into a loss of institutional memory and slower work, with new officials having to be brought up to speed on a complex set of obligations almost from scratch.

Frequent government reshuffles and restructuring are themselves weakening the state's institutional capacity, and that's the second problem.

One positive aspect of the latest government change is that the newly appointed deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Vsevolod Chentsov, was involved in the negotiating process throughout the previous period. This means a degree of continuity and institutional memory will be preserved at the political leadership level.

At the same time, the new position calls for a broader focus, shifting from foreign policy and negotiating work towards coordinating the domestic implementation of EU integration commitments.

The new deputy prime minister will need to work not only with EU member states but also ensure delivery on the Kachka-Kos plan itself and on all other obligations under Chapters 23 and 24.

It's also important to explain clearly within the country that, again, this is not "Kachka's personal plan" but obligations agreed with the EU as part of the negotiating process.

If Ukraine wants to join the EU, it has to show real reform progress and give member states grounds to support further advancement of the talks.

The experience of other candidate countries shows that government changes and frequent reshuffles slow the pace of negotiations. In Ukraine's conditions, avoiding this entirely isn't realistic. Institutional safeguards are needed instead.

One such safeguard would be appointing a chief negotiator who is a senior civil servant rather than a politician dependent on the cabinet's composition. This model could reduce the negotiating process's exposure to political rotations.

A second safeguard is strengthening the role of the secretaries of the negotiating working groups, who are staff of the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration.

They are the ones who can keep the work going, hold onto the documentation, track how decisions are implemented and hand institutional memory over to new leadership.

Today, however, the Government Office lacks sufficient staffing capacity and suffers from high turnover. As a result, one person can end up serving as secretary for ten working groups at once, which makes it physically impossible to carry out these functions properly.

One of the new deputy prime minister's priorities should be strengthening the Government Office, since it is the central coordinating structure of the negotiating process.

The office should have around 100 specialists, or even more.

If Ukraine genuinely wants rapid EU accession, it needs to think not only about political statements but about the state apparatus's actual capacity to deliver on negotiating commitments.

Postponing difficult reforms will slow down accession. Frequent reorganisations without mechanisms to retain staff and institutional memory will work against us as well. Every delay gives EU member states additional grounds not to rush further progress for Ukraine.

The speed of accession depends not only on Brussels' political will but also on our own capacity to fulfil the commitments we've taken on, consistently and on time.

Liubov Akulenko,

Executive Director, Ukrainian Centre for European Policy