💶 Kyiv Didn’t Get €1,5 Billion from EU

Kyiv didn’t get almost €1,5 billion from EU because it hasn’t completed 3 reforms under Ukraine Facility. Why weren’t these reforms done? 🤔

On Aug. 8, the EU Council approved the transfer of €3,056 billion within the fourth tranche under the Ukraine Facility program. This is an EU project that supports the Ukrainian economy and allows the state to focus its money on defence 🛡.

Under the previous agreements, Ukraine had to get €4.5 billion for completing 16 reforms. Ukraine completed 13 instead ✅.

Spokesperson of European Commission Guillaume Mercier said that three reforms Ukraine didn’t complete are reform of Ukraine’s Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA) 🏛, decentralization reform 🌍, and reform that regulates selection of judges in the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) ⚖️.

Gwara Media’s journalists studied what those are, why Ukraine needed them, and what blocked the progress.

The ARMA was created to search for likely “unlawful” property and assets, arrest them, and then transfer them into state ownership.

Also, when in criminal proceedings the court finds, for instance, a business owner guilty and confiscates their property and other assets, these assets are then transferred under the ARMA’s management.

Here’s an example: in 2018, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) launched criminal proceedings into unlawful schemes related to the gas reserves on Novoiarivsk and Novyi Rozdil thermal power stations in Lviv Oblast 🔥.

Investigation figured that because of the station’s schemes the state lost 1,4 billion hryvnias ($33,7M).

The ARMA confiscated both stations from their owners and beneficiaries and transferred the rights to manage those assets to the Naftogaz Teplo company to avoid an industrial disaster and launch a heating season for 60,000 residents of Novoiarivsk and Novyi Rozdil 🏘.

“For years of ARMA’s work, certain areas where abuses (of authority) happened have been recorded. For instance, (within) the speed with which managers of arrested assets are selected ⏳.

Plus, the competition for the position of head of the Agency was conducted without international experts 🌐, which increased the risks of illegal political influence on the commission’s decision.

And the independent audit wasn’t conducted according to law,” representatives of Transparency International Ukraine (TIU) told Gwara Media’s journalists.

Ukraine’s Parliament passed the bill for ARMA’s reform on June 18, 2025. But the president signed the bill into law in July 2025 — after the European Commission decided to cut off the fourth tranche. The ARMA reform bill was included in the parliament’s agenda back in February 2025.

TIU says that the bill was stuck in the parliament for that long because not everyone involved in passing it was interested in “cardinal changes” of the Agency’s work ✋.

Under the old law, the commission that conducted the ARMA’s audits was formed by Ukraine’s President, Cabinet of Ministers, and Parliament.

Now, under the new law, the contest is run by a commission of three experts, selected from people recommended by donors and international experts 🌍.

Ten months after the bill was made into law, this commission has to assess the ARMA’s work and release a conclusion about its efficiency ✅.

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