December 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the European Union and Ukraine. This milestone is an opportunity to recall the past and look to the common future.

In particular, this was discussed in the article by the EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarína Mathernová for the European Pravda.

Katarína Mathernová emphasized that the full-scale Russian invasion has further strengthened the EU-Ukraine partnership.

On the occasion of the anniversary, the EU Delegation to Ukraine prepared communications that clearly demonstrate the evolution of relations over the past 30 years, as well as the growing support for Ukraine from the European Union.

For example, in 1998, the EU accounted for only 13% of Ukraine’s foreign trade, while in 2022 it was over 55%. In 2000, the volume of trade was EUR 10.3 billion, and in 2022 – EUR 57.7 billion. Macro-financial assistance in 2014-2021 amounted to EUR 5.6 billion, and in 2022-23, as much as EUR 25.2 billion.

The European Union’s support for Ukraine during the war is determinant for its resilience and, at the same time, its transformation into a modern European state.

In December, a communication campaign called ‘Together we are resilient. Together we are Europe’ was launched. It was dedicated to the European Union’s support for small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine. Its purpose was to demonstrate the scope and immutability of the support and make businesses aware of the available opportunities.

The campaign included TV and radio broadcasts, videos and publications in the media.

H.E. Katarína Mathernová, EU Ambassador to Ukraine, spoke about the three major areas of EU support for Ukrainian SMEs in an interview with Forbes.

According to her, those include improving entrepreneurs’ access to finance, enhancing SME capacity to do business and tapping into the European market, and working with the Ukrainian government on improving business environment and investment climate in Ukraine.

Micro-grants to immediately support small businesses is one of the EU’s rapid relief tools available to SMEs. Within the EU4Business programme alone, more than a thousand businesses have been supported in this way.

One of them – a service station that repairs volunteer-procured vehicles for the troops ¬– was discussed in one of the Espresso TV stories about how the required equipment was purchased with a grant funding from the EU.

In total, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the EU has mobilized about EUR 90 million for bilateral SME support projects, i.e., those operating inside Ukraine only. In addition to those, there are also regional Eastern Partnership projects. Iryna Hubarets, Sector Manager in charge of competition and economic cooperation issues at the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, spoke about this in an interview with Ukrainian Radio.

The EU Delegation was awarded by the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs for supporting Ukraine’s business on its path to the EU. This year’s SUP Award Ceremony took place on December 7 to acknowledge the winners.

One of the European Union’s priorities is to help create enabling regulatory conditions for small and medium-sized enterprises and approximate business environment to the EU Single Market rules. It is in this direction that the EU closely cooperates with SUP, the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs. With the EU support, the organization does an important job in analysing the Ukrainian legislation and its adaptation to the EU Acquis with utmost benefits for Ukrainian businesses and faster pivot of SMEs to the European rules.

The forum gathered more than 400 participants. Among the key topics there were business resilience, recovery and opportunities. The European Union works closely with Ukrainian small and medium-sized businesses in all these and other directions.

During the forum, Valeriy Pekar, an entrepreneur and public figure, presented the outcomes of the foresight session ‘Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Process of European Integration: Scenarios and Strategies’ as part of the ‘Together we are resilient. Together we are Europe’ communication campaign.

More than 3,100 participants from all over Ukraine tried out for the quiz held as part of the ‘Together we are resilient. Together we are Europe’ communication campaign.

The quiz was hosted on the EuroQuiz platform with 270 to 700 players competing in it every day.

In total, the participants had to answer 10 quite challenging questions. For example, which institution created with the support of the EU deals with doing business deregulation in Ukraine; what was the total budget of all the SME support projects channelled through EU4Business; how much money did the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development undertake to allocate for Ukraine during 2022-23, and others.

Another winner, Kateryna Lyakh from Kropyv­nytskyi, also passed the training offered by EU Study Days as early as in 2022. She follows closely all the EU-related news and other information.

In her opinion, the EU support for Ukrainian business is extremely important for the country.

All in all, 100 winners were decided based on the quiz results. They received power banks, thermal mugs, and blankets.

Kateryna Terpimova from the town of Enerhodar currently lives in the Netherlands and studies in the 9th grade at SchoolToGo. This is an online school designed to keep children in temporarily occupied and front-line territories within the Ukrainian education system, as well as those whose families have moved outside Ukraine.

Kateryna learned about the school in the summer of 2022 in her occupied hometown. She liked the online classes, so she decided to fully join the school from the new academic year. Now she calls it ‘her second family’.

The school originated in Slovakia after the full-scale Russian invasion as a volunteer project that was kept afloat for a while thanks to small donations from various donors. Currently, SchoolToGo is co-funded by the European Union, which gives stability and confidence in the future.

Recently, SchoolToGo signed a Memorandum of Cooperation with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Currently, about 1,200 children from Ukraine and 41 other countries study at the school. The geographical spread is wide – there are students from European countries, USA, and Japan.

The school operates on the Slovak online platform Teemea in two learning modes for students to choose between – Online DAILY and Online SMART.

DAILY – the learning mode Kateryna Terpimova opts for – is a classic school scheme with fixed classes and daily time-defined learning schedule. SMART is a more flexible mode, without restrictions on the number of students, because the emphasis is made primarily on independent learning through the platform.

Upon completion of studies, the school issues all the necessary credentials in the government-approved format to students who need them thanks to the participation of partner Ukrainian educational institutions in the project.

At SchoolToGo they are convinced that online learning needs to be developed in every possible way.

The new modular hospital in Berezanka, Mykolaiv region, became one of six such hospitals opened thanks to the “EU4ResilientRegions – Special Assistance Programme Ukraine”, which is co-financed by the European Union and the German government, and implemented by the GIZ.

According to the deputy head of the municipality, Iryna Kompaniyenko, a little more than a year passed between the signing of the memorandum on the construction of the hospital and its commissioning.

Considering the challenges of the war, the new facility was made energy-independent. An autonomous 70 kW solar power system has been installed to ensure uninterrupted operation of all the medical equipment. It includes modern backup batteries with a power storage capacity of 52 kW, hybrid and grid tie inverters, as well as real-time-operation software. For emergency power supply, a modern 160 kW diesel generator with fuel reserve was also installed in the area around the hospital. To shield the facility from possible shelling and debris, the premises along with the generators were protected with HESCO barriers.

According to the chief medical officer, the majority of the staff will now move from the old building to the new hospital.

Thanks to some of that latest equipment, the hospital will be able to deliver more services within the scope of the Medical Guarantee Programme. In addition to Berezanka, with the support of the programme, new modular hospitals were built in Trostyanets (Sumy region), Chernihiv, Shiroke (Zaporizhzhia region), and Pereshchepyne (Dnipropetrovsk region). A diagnostic centre was opened in Lviv.

Almost two thousand people watched the films of the European Film Festival 2023 (EUFF), which took place in Ukraine from December 13 to 19, 2023. Viewers could watch nine films produced in the EU countries, Great Britain and Ukraine online for free by just signing up on the website.

The Ukrainian film ‘Luxembourg, Luxembourg’ directed by Antonio Lukich, which was a kind of the festival programme perk, became the most viewed one.

The festival was organized by the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine together with the European cultural institutions – Goethe-Institut, Institut Français and Cineuropa.

The films offered for viewing were selected by professionals of cinematic art and critics.

In addition to the Ukrainian film, the audience could enjoy watching ‘A house made of splinters’ (Denmark, Ukraine, Sweden and Finland), ‘Any day now’ (Finland), ‘Gods of Molenbeek’ (Finland, Belgium, Germany), ‘Luzzu’ (Malta), ‘Oscar & Lilli – where no one knows us’ (Austria), ‘Dating Amber’ (Ireland, Great Britain), ‘Io sto bene’ (English: “I’m fine”) (Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Italy), ‘ Cinco lobitos’ (English: “Lullaby”) (Spain). All of them were winners of various film festivals.

On top of watching films, the viewership could also test themselves in a quiz, and 70 winners received prizes.

In April 2022, 40-year-old Yuliya left her home in Slovyansk, Donetsk region, and moved to Kyiv. A month later, she started working at the IDP support centre hosted by one of the charitable foundations, and now she is a project manager for supporting the aged.

This is one of five video stories about how internally displaced persons managed to find successful jobs in new places. The videos were produced and distributed by the ‘You are at home’ project. It is implemented by the Happy Monday career development platform with the support of the EU and the International Renaissance Foundation.

The project goal and, in particular, of its communication campaign is to break stereotypes about IDPs among employers.

That’s the main focus that the communication campaign wants to get across. It was launched in November 2023. The first stage included placement of boards in the four cities of Ukraine that hosted the largest number of IDPs – Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Odesa and Ternopil. In December, the project distributed video stories of displaced people, it engaged business and performed media outreach.

The project aims to engage as many IDPs and employers as possible in the campaign. Those willing can join it by filling out the forms on the website. According to the project manager, several applications from employers are received on a daily basis. With regards to IDPs, there is still a certain barrier for many.

This active communication campaign will continue for several more months. The project hopes that after it’s completed, the key messages and communications will continue to spread and promote non-discrimination of internally displaced persons in the labour market.

In December, the city of Kyiv hosted the LadyFest business forum. About 130 female entrepreneurs took part in panel discussions about innovations in business. The forum was organized by a civil society organisation called Ukrainian Platform ‘Women in Business’ under the auspices of the EU4Business: SME Recovery, Competitiveness and Internationalization jointly funded by the EU and the Government of Germany.

What is needed for innovations to take root, how to effectively cooperate with international partners, investors and donors, what must be kept in mind when implementing innovations in business, and why it is important for Ukrainian female entrepreneurs to be united in the present times – these and other issues were discussed during the forum.

LadyFest in Kyiv was the seventh one this year alone. The previous ones were held in Vinnytsia, Khmelnytskyi, Poltava and Chernivtsi, and twice in Lviv. In total, about 1,300 businesswomen took part in the business forums. The 2023 series was a kind of recovery after the hiatus caused by the full-scale Russian invasion. To emphasize this, the organizers chose a special dress code for the events – white garments with elements of Ukrainian ethnicity, as symbols of refinement and recovery of Ukraine.

In general, similar events by the Women in Business have been held since 2017.

During the discussions, they talked about the mission of female leaders who will come to rehabilitate and get war veterans back to work, accommodate teams, generate more jobs, and recover the economy.

One of the speakers was CEO of Ecopan Olha Romanenko.

The entrepreneur mentioned it was her first experience of attending such an event, but now she will join the platform as its member and mentor.

18 civil society organisations won the call for proposals in ‘Assisting in the preparation and start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU’. It was held within the framework of the European Renaissance of Ukraine programme funded by the EU and implemented by the International Renaissance Foundation.

The European Council decided to open negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU on December 14. The negotiations are expected to begin in the spring of 2024. Expertise from civil society organizations and their involvement in the process will be crucial.

One of the winners of the European Renaissance of Ukraine’s call was the Human Rights Centre Zmina.

The organisation plans to assess human rights compliance policies in Ukraine, which must be aligned with the EU criteria, and develop recommendations for their improvement considering challenges of the war. Particular attention will be paid to freedom of expression, language laws, equality and non-discrimination, as well as the observance of human rights during de-occupation and reintegration.

The organisation is confident that the protection of rights and freedoms is a challenge for Ukraine in wartime. At the same time, however, it is the development and transformation driver for the state.