Publications

This Handbook, now in its third edition, represents the most comprehensive and independent assessment of the Association Agreement and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) between the EU and Ukraine. It is one of a Trilogy of Handbooks, alongside comparable publications on Georgia and Moldova.

The purpose of Deepening EU-Ukrainian Relations is to make the complex political, economic, and legal content of the Association Agreement readily understandable. This third edition, published seven years since the Agreement’s implementation is substantially new in content, both updating how Ukraine has been enacting the Agreement, and introducing new dimensions (including the Green Deal, the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber security, and gender equality). The Handbook is also up to date in analysing Ukraine’s the development of the Zelensky administration, with its unfinished agenda for cutting corruption and reforming the rule of law.

For Ukraine, the signing of the Association Agreement and the DCFTA with the European Union in 2014 was an act of strategic geopolitical significance. Emblematic of the struggle to replace the Yanukovych regime at home and to resist attempts by Russia to deny its ‘European choice’, the Association Agreement is a defiant statement of Ukraine’s determination to become an independent democratic state.

Two teams of researchers from leading independent think tanks, CEPS in Brussels and the Expert-Grup in Chişinău, collaborated on this project, with the support of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). This book is co-edited by Michael Emerson, Associate Senior Research Fellow at CEPS and Veronika Movchan, Academic Director of the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER), Kyiv. Other contributors to this volume include: Yevhen Anhel, Oleksandra Betliy, Kateryna Furmanets, Iryna Fedets, Iryna Kosse, Olha Krasovska, Kostyantyn Kravchuk, Vitaliy Kravchuk, Yuliia Oharenko, Mykola Ryzhenkov, Oleksa Stepanyuk.

“These books offer a one-stop guide to the Association Agreements—the authors have painstakingly analysed the incredibly complex Agreements to deliver a compact and accessible overview to all those who need to grasp their contents. The national teams also shed light on the salience of the content for domestic reforms. Even though the books are not meant to be read like a book, the reader who does so is rewarded with a panoramic overview of the sheer scale and ambition of the AA-DCFTA. The books offer a plethora of pivotal insights into the Agreements while at the same time raising a number of important questions. A ‘Bible.’” — Kataryna Wolczuk, Centre for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies, University of Birmingham.

Co-published with Rowman and Littlefield International (RLI), this book can be purchased from the RLI website.