Bìznes Inform (Oct 2020)
The European Integration Challenges of Ukraine
Abstract
The article is concerned with an analysis of Ukraine’s European integration challenges, which are considered from the position of the effectiveness of foreign trade, as well as in light of the institutional challenges of the European integration course. According to the results of research, both the dynamics and the structure of Ukraine’s foreign trade relations with the EU Member States, the CIS and Asia countries are analyzed. It is defined that the focus on the European Union market prevented domestic exporters from reaching the pre-crisis levels of 2013. The resource nature of the national exports to the EU is underlined. The high level of interdependence in the sphere of foreign trade relations with former partners of Ukraine in the CIS – the Russian Federation and Belarus, especially in the field of imports of fuel and energy resources, and export of nuclear reactors, boilers, machines, railway locomotives, products of inorganic chemistry, is emphasized. It is determined that Ukraine’s implementation of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement is at a low level of 43%. The authors characterize the main tendencies in Europe as to the quality of life of the population on the basis of two indicators - the proportion of households that barely make ends meet (Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, Cyprus, Portugal, Romania), and have unsatisfactory living conditions (Cyprus, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal, Slovenia) - the values of which are much higher compared to the average level in the EU. The general conclusion on the ambiguity of the issue of the effectiveness of the national economy’s orientedness toward the market of the European Union has been drawn. The need to take into account the multi-vector nature of the modern globalized world in the process of researching the impact of European integration on the economic development of Ukraine is reasoned.
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