“Pulse of democracy,” or How the third sector can speed up Ukraine’s EU membership
According to Oleh Rybachuk, director of the Center UA non-governmental organization (NGO), next summer the EU will discuss a new program of supporting the third sector in Ukraine. In particular, the project is aimed at developing the institutional capacity of NGOs in dealing with the authorities. The EU’s contribution to the promotion of civil society was high on the agenda of the first international public discussion “Foreign Transformations Expertise,” part of a joint project by Arsenii Yatseniuk’s Open Ukraine Foundation and the International Renaissance Foundation.
As Yevhen Bystrytsky, executive director of the International Renaissance Foundation, emphasized, the EU is not only an economic and political association but also a conglomerate of states with well-developed civic societies. He thinks it is the third sector that can bring Ukraine closer to signing an association agreement. “I believe that, thanks to our joint efforts, we will be able to speed up Ukraine’s European integration well before the end of this year,” he says.
On the other hand, Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine, promised in the introductory speech that the EU would continue helping Ukraine financially and organizationally to develop its third sector. For, according to the diplomat, the latter is an indicator of democratic principles in society in the perspective of Ukraine’s European integration. “It is by way of civic organizations that we can feel the pulse of civic society in Ukraine,” Teixeira stressed.
The impact of civic organizations on the process of Ukraine’s integration with the EU is so far negligible. Experts believe this is caused by several factors. Above all, Bystrytsky notes, the point is in a low level of cooperation between the third sector and the government. According to Oleksandr Solontai, an expert at the Institute of Political Education and member of the Council of Elders of the all-Ukrainian civic organization Foundation of Regional Initiatives, the government of independent Ukraine has never created financial and other conditions for promoting civic society. “[The authorities] have never had time to do this, and civic organizations are still unable to get together and lobby this issue,” the expert says.
Bystrytsky notes that right now in Ukraine nobody cares about creating conditions for promoting civic society. “We can see no active, rational and open dialog between civic organizations and the government. We are not satisfied with the steps now being taken,” Bystrystsky stresses.
To solve this problem, Pavol Demes, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund office in Bratislava, advises civic organizations, on the basis of his own experience, to join efforts. This unity will also facilitate working in politically sensitive environments, the expert says. “When one organization begins to, say, monitor the elections, they may quickly close it for dozens of objective reasons,” Demes says. “But if it is an association of organizations, where there are ‘good guys’ who work in the field of education, culture, and ecology and some ‘bad guys’ who watch politicians — their voice will be much louder and it will be difficult to suppress them.”
In the view of Rybachuk, a stick-and-carrot policy is the only effective way to deal with the authorities in Ukraine. “A certain part of society should approach the government with a pitchfork in hand, and the rest should offer a constructive dialog,” Rybachuk says. For, as the expert notes, the experience of public response to the government’s initiatives that touch upon or run counter to vital interests is a very good illustration of this. “There were attempts to pass a law and restrict the activity of civic organizations. This sparked mass-scale protests by public and European organizations. The government quickly postponed this question. Again, an active public response forced the government to put on hold the problem of the Ukrainian language’s status,” says Rybachuk.
Demes points out that the third sector should not ignore working in the field of ethnic and religious identification. “These issues are slightly metaphysical for a civic society, as if this did not concern non-governmental organizations. But if these matters remain unattended, politicians will take advantage of this: they will claim that stability is much more important than democracy,” Demes says.
Yet it is Ukraine itself, not the EU, that really needs the promotion of civic society and civic organizations as its key motive force. Therefore, to avoid distortion of interests and an EU lobby in the Ukrainian milieu, Ukraine should diversify the sources of donors’ assistance to the third sector. “Organize your work and your projects in such a way that you could take money from both the EU and the US,” Demes advises.
By contrast, as Solontai told The Day, representatives of the Ukrainian civic sector are convinced that it is the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian business that should give money to civic organizations. “There should be a percentage of the income that an individual or a business must transfer to the civic organization which they support or are a member of. This share must be of a stimulating nature: for example, a lower tax will be levied on this amount. As a result, all the three parties will be winners. The entrepreneur saves on taxes, the civic organization receives money from its followers, and the state knows that far more good things will be done on the basis of this contribution than the state apparatus could do by raising these funds in the form of a tax,” Solontai says. The expert emphasizes that any other financial or technical assistance — from the EU, the UN, or Russia — should represent a smaller portion.
