While defending its territory against Russian aggression, Ukraine is aiming for another strategic goal: transforming its institutions to meet EU standards.
2025 will witness an unprecedented push to overhaul crucial rule-of-law institutions, from the customs service to the Supreme Court, marking Ukraine's most ambitious reform agenda since gaining EU candidate status.
Beyond improving the country's rule of law, these reforms should help to fill up Ukraine’s budget, much of which is allocated to support Ukraine’s armed forces in the face of Russia’s war.
Ukraine's reform agenda gained unprecedented momentum in 2024, prompted by the dual forces of EU accession requirements and domestic demand for change. Though international financial support plays a crucial role–particularly through an EU–led assistance programme — Ukrainian society remains the key architect and advocate of these transformations.
Recent polls show that 63 percent of Ukrainians support international partners' involvement in anti-corruption reforms, reflecting a genuine societal commitment to fast EU accession.
First and foremost, in 2025, Ukraine will work on reforming its Economic Security Bureau (ESBU). This agency deals with crimes that hinder the Ukrainian state's economic interests. The bureau’s detectives investigate falsifying financial documents, evading taxes, or even illegal gambling.
For several years, the institution was heavily politicised and even used to pressure businesses for political and financial gains.
After over six months of discussions and compromise-searching ping-pong, in June 2024, Ukraine’s parliament kicked off the bureau’s reboot. Its new head will be selected through an open, transparent competition and should take office by the end of February 2025.
The next task is to fill up staff vacancies and launch transparent, merit-based attestation for current employees. These will ensure the agency, which has up to 4,000 officers, receives new, fresh blood to carry out its functions.
As the ESBU is eying up what brings in state revenues, the shared feeling for this reform is that it should help Ukraine’s budget drain less and reclaim the parts lost due to counterfeiting or unpaid taxes.
The same logic applies to another gargantuan reform — a reboot of the customs service.
For years, customs offices have been known as one of Ukraine's major ‘cash cows’. As the service cannot boast of corruption-free officers, its work would resemble a colander more than a pot — with many loopholes and ways to allow for tax evasion.
In the summer of 2025, Ukraine’s soon-to-be rebuilt customs service will have its new chief, who, using the Economic Security Bureau's blueprint, will initiate the process of re-evaluating personnel.
By strengthening the independence of the customs service director and eliminating the authorities' political leverage to appoint and dismiss them, the customs operation in Ukraine should get a second wind of transparency and efficiency.
Customs is undeniably one of the ideological cornerstones of the European Union. For Ukraine, making its customs systems operate on a new level with transparent rules and procedures is a prerequisite for synchronising with the EU.
The reforms of the Economic Security Bureau and the customs service are complex and will take a long time to implement. To completely change the setup of the customs service, Ukraine will need to adopt new laws to guarantee the institution's independence and compliance with EU standards and best practices.
Once aligned, a more effective modus operandi of the two institutions will kill two birds with one stone.
First, it will help Ukraine prepare itself for EU accession and tackle financial violations and crimes.
Second, the Ukrainian state budget will receive more critical revenues to feed Ukraine’s defence against Russia’s war. As for now, the entire income raised from Ukrainian taxes is used to cover defence-related needs (military salaries, etc).
In some other countries, two grand renewals would be enough for years — but not in Ukraine. Here, several significant reforms are being implemented while we fight the war.
2025 will be a life-changing year for Ukraine's judiciary, launching its most ambitious renewal since regaining independence. The cornerstone of this transformation is hiring around 2,000 new judges — a move that will reinvigorate Ukraine's courts with professionals selected through strict, EU-standard procedures.
A key element of this judicial renewal is the establishment of the High Court for Public Law Disputes. This specialised court will strengthen administrative justice by reviewing decisions of national-level public agencies, including crucial oversight of decrees of state agencies and civil service appointments.
This court will use the successful blueprint of the High Anti-Corruption Court as a guiding model. The latter was started from scratch in 2019 to ensure high standards in tackling high-level corruption. Six renowned international experts selected judges for this court. Again, the same model is needed to recruit professionals with high integrity and no political links.
While establishing new institutions is crucial, reforming existing ones is equally important. The Supreme Court, as Ukraine's highest court of general jurisdiction, represents the most challenging aspect of judicial transformation.
The urgency of this reform became evident after recent scandals, including the charging of the court's head with accepting a €2.5m bribe.
Two elements are key to a successful reboot. First, we must improve procedures for appointing new judges — to fill around 50 vacant positions (out of 200). A transparent selection process with public and international experts on the selection board will ensure the appointees are free from political influence.
Also, the remaining sitting judges, who comprise more than three-quarters of the Court, should undergo integrity checks. Such screening will help eliminate corruption risks and increase Ukrainians’ trust in a fair judiciary.
Ukraine's reform journey, launched during the 2013 Maidan revolution, has dramatically accelerated despite Russia's full-scale invasion.
The results speak for themselves: a new anti-corruption infrastructure that has successfully prosecuted high-level officials, fulfilment of all seven EU pre-candidacy requirements, and unprecedented transparency in public spending.
Olha Kovalska is international advocacy expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Centre in Kyiv, where Tetiana Shevchuk is legal counsel.
Olha Kovalska is international advocacy expert at the Anti-Corruption Action Centre in Kyiv, where Tetiana Shevchuk is legal counsel.