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EU concerned by Ukraine’s controversial labour reforms [1]

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Date: 2023-02

The European Union has regularly expressed concerns about the radical labour reforms Ukraine has been trying to implement since 2020, openDemocracy can reveal.

The controversial reforms seek to deregulate what the Ukrainian government considers the outsized role of trade unions in the workplace and excessive red tape on hiring, firing and management.

But briefings dating from before and after the Russian invasion show the EU has urged the government to conduct reforms in line with international labour standards and in consultation with trade unions.

European Commission (EC) documents obtained through Freedom of Information laws expose an apparent divergence between Ukraine’s reforms and the EU’s ‘social market economy’ model, where the state seeks to broker a compromise between market forces and citizens.

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The findings come as Ukraine seeks to adapt its legislation to EU regulations as part of its EU candidacy and existing association agreement – a political, trade and economic reform deal designed to bring the country closer to EU standards.

But Ukraine’s homegrown reforms – which are separate from the EU harmonisation process – have been criticised by European and Ukrainian trade unions for breaching workplace legal conventions set by the UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) as well as EU labour norms.

“The Ukrainian authorities have made persistent attacks on trade union rights and sought to write them and workers out of the reform process,” Jan Willem Goudriaan, the general secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), told openDemocracy.

According to a report prepared for a key EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv on 3 February, the bloc viewed Ukraine’s legislation on socio-economic reform as being at an “early stage”.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/ukraine-european-union-labour-law-reform/

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