What should Ukraine do to join the EU, what challenges should it overcome, and what will Ukraine’s accession bring to the European Union? These questions were the focus of a meeting between the Head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, Matti Maasikas, and students of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.

The lecture was held on March 24 as part of the «Together, we are Europe» communication campaign. This campaign informs about the EU’s comprehensive support for Ukraine and its continuing commitment. The decision to grant EU candidate status to Ukraine in June 2022 was the most crucial political sign of the EU’s support and solidarity with Ukraine.

However, Ukraine is already having a positive impact on the EU, the Ambassador believes.

However, Ukraine’s accession to the EU will not be an easy process. Many challenges are already evident, the Ambassador emphasized, in particular, the size of the country, as it is easier for smaller states to implement the necessary reforms and changes. Improving the governance system and adapting the EU acquis communautaire will require much effort.

As part of the «Together, we are Europe» campaign, a mobile exhibition of unique artworks by Ukrainian illustrators on the EU’s assistance to Ukraine and Ukrainians during the full-scale war continues to operate. The park on Khreshchatyk Street in Cherkasy will host this exhibition until April 10.

Cherkasy will be the last city in Ukraine to host the exhibition, which started its tour in Kyiv in August 2022 and visited Lviv, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, Uzhhorod, Odesa, and Dnipro.

«Do you know you are a human? Do you know it or not?» This famous poem by Vasyl Symonenko launched a communication campaign about the European Union’s support for Ukrainian culture and art during the war. The campaign started on March 22, World Poetry Day.

In the campaign launch video, nine people – EU officials and well-known Ukrainians – recite lines from Symonenko’s poem. Among them are EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Mariya Gabriel, poet and musician Serhiy Zhadan, soldier and poet Pavlo Vyshebaba, and EU Ambassador to Ukraine Matti Maasikas.

This initiative launched a flash mob to support Ukrainian poetry #TogetherWeCreate, to encourage social media users to publicly recite poems by Ukrainian poets and pass the baton to others.

As the title suggests, the communication campaign «Together, we Preserve. Together, we Create» has two key focuses.

The first is «Together, we Preserve.» It is about preserving Ukraine’s unique tangible cultural heritage – architecture, museums, monuments, ancient churches, collections, archives, etc., including its intangible assets, such as traditions, folklore, and cultural memory.

«Together, We Create» is about the EU’s support for Ukrainian artists, cultural workers and creative industries. With grants, scholarships, and mobility programs, they can continue their professional activities, improve their skills, gain new experience, look for partners, and create modern Ukrainian culture.

The nationwide communication campaign «Together, we Preserve. Together, we Create» will have online and offline informational, educational, cultural, and art events with various interactive elements.

And starting on May 1, people can exchange incandescent lamps for LED ones only in 23 Ukrposhta offices in cities with more than one million inhabitants and regional centers with the highest demand and need.

Here are some campaign statistics: 23% pre-booked lamps via the Diia app, while 77% brought incandescent lamps to post offices without any pre-booking.

Among the regions, the leaders of the campaign are Kyiv region (2 million lamps exchanged),Dnipropetrovs’k region (1.4 million), and Lviv region (1.1 million), followed by others – Kharkiv (860,000), Odesa (810,000), Vinnytsia (730,000), and Cherkasy (510,000).

As part of the campaign, everyone can exchange up to 5 old incandescent light bulbs for the same number of energy-saving ones.

In March, the EU Delegation to Ukraine announced the winners of the Euroclubs Project calls for proposals. Twenty-seven organizations will receive consulting and financial support for their ideas.

Euroclubs are informal associations at secondary schools, universities, libraries, and youth and children’s organizations that develop an understanding of the importance of European integration among club participants. The Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine has provided regular support to this movement since 1996. Every year, thousands of children and young people join various projects of Euroclubs across Ukraine.

Among the winners of the last call for proposals is the Kirovohrad Region Euroclubs Council. Founded in 2009 and hosted by the Kirovohrad Regional Center for Children & Youth Creativity, this organization has extensive experience.

The Kirovohrad Region Euroclubs Council won with three projects at once.

The EuroPuzzle: European Ukraine Project involves a game that Euroclub members will create first. The project will start with a competition of creative youth artworks entitled «Symbol of My European Community». This competition will become the basis for the game.

Participants of the «How I See European Ukraine» Project will gain knowledge and practical skills in creating high-quality videos. With their videos, Euroclub members will convey an understanding of Ukraine’s European perspective, its status as an EU candidate, and the EU’s assistance to Ukraine.

The third project – the European Club Program – will improve participants’ knowledge of European integration processes and political system, opportunities to take part in youth exchange programs and joint projects, and strengthen their skills in handling information and using computer technology.

All projects will be implemented jointly by Euroclub members from Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Lviv, and Dnipro regions.

The project started in March and runs with the support of the EU-funded program «Civic Society for Democratization» implemented by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting.

Kherson needs humanitarian aid very much. The city is shelled daily from the left bank of the Dnipro River. The explosion of just one mine near a multi-story building shatters several dozens of windows. The city has dozens of shellings every day. The apartments are cold, and people urgently need warm blankets and comforters, especially families with small children, large families, and older people.

Most requests for warm blankets come from families with children living in the suburbs. That’s why many blankets went to Antonivka and Komyshany immediately after delivery. The kids were so happy to get them.

The daily work of volunteer journalists is uneasy and dangerous. The grant funds of the project «Synergy of Volunteers of the Kherson Region» partly cover salaries and taxes for the staff of the public organization Journalists Association «Alternative». Notably, on March 13, it was exactly one year when the organization, which brings together professionals from various media in the region, started volunteering. For 255 days, volunteers worked under the occupation, delivering food to villages on the front line.

With the liberation of Kherson and the right-bank part of the region, the volunteers had even more work to do.

Of 350,000 people living in Kherson before the war, approximately 50-60 thousand remained. These are mostly large and low-income families and older people who cannot move to another region due to health or financial problems.

The Ukraine Recovery Program implemented by the European Investment Bank (EIB) will fund 82 projects. The loan program was signed at the end of 2020, but the war put the plans on hold.

Now, it has been decided to resume the process and start the planned activities where possible.

The total budget of the Ukraine Recovery Program is EUR 340 million. Among the projects already selected for funding are 19 hospitals, 48 educational institutions (schools, lyceums, kindergartens), 4 water supply plants, 4 sewage plants, 2 heating systems, and 5 administrative buildings. There will be another selection process ahead.

The work will cover several regions of Ukraine, including the recently liberated ones. Initially, the program was to operate in the government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts and the adjacent Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. However, the war has changed this geography, but Ukraine’s need for such assistance has grown tremendously.

The European Investment Bank, a financial institution of the European Union, has been cooperating with Ukraine since 2007. Since then, the total amount of financial resources provided by the EIB to Ukraine in the public and private sectors has exceeded EUR 7.5 billion.

A modern operating table for the district hospital has become another asset of the Berezan territorial community in Mykolaiv Oblast thanks to cooperation with the EU-funded program “EU4ResilientRegions – Special Assistance Programme Ukraine”. In mid-March, the table was delivered by representatives of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), which implements the project.

The Berezan community joined the Resilient Regions Program in December 2021 by signing a memorandum with GIZ.

This cooperation has already brought a lot of benefits, such as the Mobile Administrator (a portable automated workstation), portable power plants, solar panels, generators, a fully equipped room at the Center for Psychological Assistance and Social Rehabilitation, and much more.

In February 2023, the construction of a modular hospital began in Berezan. Meanwhile, connecting two water treatment plants in specially equipped sites for community residents to access purified water is being completed. The community has received assistance from the program for more than UAH 2.5 million.

The Berezan community is now one of 71 communities that have signed memoranda of cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit. The EU and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development co-funded the program. The program works with communities in 10 southern and eastern regions of Ukraine to provide residents with comfortable and efficient access to quality local administrative, healthcare, and social services.

Economic analysis is a detailed routine work, but March brought something new to the monitoring activities. When analyzing the economic situation in a country, experts usually compare the indicators of a given month with those of the same month of the previous year, explains Oleksandra Betliy, one of the MEMU authors. Naturally, in March 2022, experts witnessed a dramatic drop when compared to the months before the large-scale Russian invasion.

Monthly surveys of Ukrainian businesses are another important EU-funded product launched in May last year. Interestingly, the Institute applies the Business Tendency Survey methodology used in Europe after World War II, when it also required up-to-date information on the state of the economy.

According to her, the latest research shows good short-term (three months) business trends, but it is quite uncertain to make prognosis for the next few years.