Six years after Ukraine’s Euromaidan: reforms and challenges ahead

T he political events of early 2014 and the conflict with Russia had a strong negative impact on the Ukrainian economy.

Publishing date: 30 June 2020
Authors: Georg Zachmann Marek Dabrowski Marta Domínguez-Jiménez

Since the Euromaidan protests (2013-2014), Ukraine has had two presidents and four governments. They have initiated various reforms in the economic, institutional and political spheres, with the aim of bringing the country closer to the European Union, boosting economic growth and international competitiveness, and building a liberal democracy.
Reforms have been implemented in a difficult environment of external aggression, which has led to human and material losses and has caused loss of control over part of the country’s territory. However, resistance to aggression and fresh memories of the kleptocratic regime of the former president Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014) have helped to unite society and Ukraine’s political forces in favour of the reform programme.
Although many important policy and systemic changes have been implemented, the reform agenda remains unfinished. It must be continued despite the dramatic new challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
International financial support and especially International Monetary Fund conditionality have been instrumental in pushing the Ukrainian authorities to carry out major reforms (including of banking law, the gas sector and land ownership). This was done despite these reforms being opposed by old elites, or running counter to populist instincts (such as gas price reform and pension reform). The dominant role of old elites still holds back home-grown reform, leading to reformers having an unhealthy reliance on outside pressure.

Recommended citation

Dabrowski, M., M. Domínguez-Jiménez and G. Zachmann (2020) ‘Six years after Ukraine’s Euromaidan: reforms and challenges ahead’, Policy Contribution 2020/14, Bruegel

About the authors

Georg Zachmann

Georg Zachmann is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, where he has worked since 2009 on energy and climate policy. His work focuses on regional and distributional impacts of decarbonisation, the analysis and design of carbon, gas and electricity markets, and EU energy and climate policies. Previously, he worked at the German Ministry of Finance, the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, the energy think tank LARSEN in Paris, and the policy consultancy Berlin Economics.
Marek Dabrowski

Dr. Marek Dabrowski is a Non-Resident Scholar at Bruegel, co-founder and Fellow at CASE - Centre for Social and Economic Research in Warsaw and Visiting Professor at the Central European University in Vienna.

He was Chairman of the CASE Supervisory Council and its President of Management Board (1991-2011), Chairman of the Supervisory Board of CASE Ukraine in Kyiv (1999-2009 and 2013-2015), Member of the Board of Trustees and Scientific Council of the E.T. Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy in Moscow (1996-2016), Professor at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (2014-2022), and Fellow under the 2014-2015 Fellowship Initiative of the European Commission – Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs. He is a former First Deputy Minister of Finance of Poland (1989-1990), Member of Parliament (1991-1993) and Member of the Monetary Policy Council of the National Bank of Poland (1998-2004).

Since the end of 1980s he has been involved in policy advising and policy research in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Egypt, Georgia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somali, Syria, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Yemen, and in a number of international research projects related to monetary and fiscal policies, growth and poverty, currency crises, international financial architecture, perspectives of European integration, European Neighborhood Policy, trade policy, and political economy of transition.

He has also worked as a consultant in a number of EU, World Bank, IMF, UNDP, OECD and USAID projects. Marek is the author of several academic and policy papers, and editor of several book publications.
Marta Domínguez-Jiménez

Marta Domínguez Jiménez was a Research Analyst at Bruegel. Her research focuses primarily on monetary policy, financial systems and international trade and capital flows. She has published on these issues for Bruegel, in academic journals and European Parliament and Commission reports, among others.

She holds a bachelor from the University of Oxford, where she specialised in international macroeconomics and monetary economics, and a Master's from the College of Europe in Bruges. Before joining Bruegel, she was an Analyst within the Markets division of Citigroup in London, where she worked on the structuring of bespoke fixed income products and developing systematic quantitative investment strategies.

Marta is fluent in Spanish and English, and proficient in German and French