EU project launched to assess telecoms legislation in Ukraine

An EU-funded project on telecommunication services was launched in Ukraine on 15 August 2019 aimed at assessing the compliance of telecoms legislation with EU laws.

The project, ‘On-Site assessment of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement commitments on telecommunications services’, will take stock of the level of compliance of Ukrainian telecoms legislation with EU laws and the level of efficiency of its implementation, as required by the Association Agreement between the EU and Ukraine.

A modern and stable telecoms regulatory framework, efficiently implemented by independent regulatory agencies, is crucial to enhance competition between providers and to encourage further investments into state of the art networks and innovative services. Consumers and businesses in Ukraine will greatly benefit from such investments and increased competition between providers, as day-to-day life of consumers and business alike increasingly depends on digitised services.

In 2014, the EU and Ukraine signed the Association Agreement which entered into force in September 2017. The Telecom Annex to the Agreement, provisionally applied as of 1 January 2016,lists the EU acquis relevant to the telecommunications sector, which Ukraine has committed to implement by 1 January 2020.

The Association Agreement provides for a mechanism for the list to be updated by additional sector-specific legislation and EU acquis. In this context, in August 2018, Ukraine submitted a Digital Roadmap, which consists of a Digital Strategy on integration of Ukraine into the European Digital Single Market and a related Action Plan. Following the submission of the Roadmap, the EU has launched a process to assess the Roadmap, and to assist Ukraine in its progress in the digital sector.

The new project is part of this process and will focus on analysis on legal compliance with the relevant EU telecoms legislation and related implementing acts.

The European Union’s EU4Digital programme supports efforts to achieve a common roaming space among Eastern Partner countries by 2020, to strengthen the independence of National Regulatory Authorities, and to develop coordinated strategies for frequency distribution. This complements the work of the EU in the area of broadband: in cooperation with the World Bank, the EU is supporting the roll-out of broadband strategies in the 6 EaP countries.