On 2 December, Kyiv hosted the roundtable “Moving Forward or Waiting? Is Ukraine’s Agricultural Sector Ready for the European Green Deal and the CAP?” dedicated to Ukraine’s adaptation to the requirements of the European Green Deal (EGD) and the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The event brought together government officials, civil society organisations, international partners, and the voices of more than 500 small and medium-sized farmers who took part in a large-scale survey on climate and environmental policy.

In her remarks, Olha Lymar, Executive Director of the RPR Coalition, emphasised the importance of such a platform for dialogue: “The role of civil society is that we remain the actor capable of developing key policy decisions while staying non-political. We also create a space where all stakeholders can meet. And our third unique role is to act as a filter for potentially harmful decisions for the state — and this is where think tanks can help.”

Participants discussed the agricultural sector’s readiness for reforms, challenges in implementing EU eco-standards, and recommendations for policy development in sustainable land use, water protection, biodiversity, and biofuels.

Taras Kachka, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine, stressed that adaptation to the EGD has no one-size-fits-all solution: “Despite its international image, Ukraine’s agricultural sector is incredibly diverse — in structure, production scale, and types of actors involved, whether big, small, new, or well-established. It is clear that we cannot have simple, universal solutions for the entire sector.”

Liubov Akulenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Centre for European Policy, added: “Analysing the negotiation process, we identified a sector with particularly complex issues — and possibly even more of them. When the requirements of the European Green Deal are applied to agricultural policy, it becomes evident that the field requires unique specialists who understand both environmental and energy-related standards.”

During the event, two analytical studies were presented — “Water and Biodiversity” and “Soils and Land Use” — alongside policy briefs that may form the foundation of Ukraine’s negotiation position on environmental adaptation in the agricultural sector.

Organisers: The Ukrainian Centre for European Policy (UCUEP), the Ecodia Environmental Initiative Centre, and the Reanimation Package of Reforms Coalition (RPR), with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Ukraine, in cooperation with the Subcommittee on Approximation of Ukrainian Legislation to EU Law of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Ukraine’s Integration into the EU.