Civil society is key to quality reforms and robust funding from partners – Oksana Romaniuk

Photo credit: National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting

Institute of Mass Information executive director Oksana Romaniuk believes that without civil society there will be no quality reforms and no robust funding from Western partners in Ukraine.

She said this on July 4 during the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, "Detector Media" reports.

After the discussion "Civil society as a pillar of progress, inspiration, movement, and support for Ukraine's recovery. How the dialogue between the state and the local authorities can be maintained?" Romanyuk noted that the prerequisite for fuding Ukraine is trust.

"Trust will be established through collaboration with civil society, which must be built on transparent foundations if we hope to attract serious funding. It is civil society that can become the bridge between Western donors and the Ukrainian state, which will guarantee transparency and compliance with all the procedures, and will guarantee that these funds will be spent on reforms and development," Romaniuk said.

She added that during this discussion, almost all civil society representatives had spoken quite critically about the level of cooperation that exists now. After all, they have expressed their absolute readiness to join and invest their maximum efforts for the revival and development of Ukraine for it to become a more successful country: "It is not about political ambitions of any kind, opposition, power, and so on. It is not personalities but processes that are being criticized. The processes need to be corrected now."

"The panel also announced a number of reforms that are key for civil society, namely the judicial reform, which is necessary so that Ukraine has guaranteed procedures and no one is wary of investing in Ukraine. There is also the media reform, because democracy is impossible without the media, and the attention was also paid to the need for supporting the public broadcaster, its independent financing, and the completion of the reform, as well as reforms that are necessary in the context of decentralization.

"Public broadcasting is one of the priority reforms for us, the United Telethon has lost a little bit of trust in the donors' eyes, because we are talking about honesty now. This is one of the key features of Ukraine's image abroad – if we are selling it abroad, then we have to provide this product for ourselves internally, and this product can be provided by transparent cooperation with civil society, a powerful and independent Public Broadcaster," Romaniuk summed up.

We will remind you that on July 4, the two-day Ukraine Recovery Conference started in the Swiss city of Lugano. Representatives of 40 countries and 18 organizations, high EU officials, representatives of international financial institutions and human rights organizations will take part in the conference.

Ukraine is represented by Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Ukrainian ministers and deputies, and civil society representatives.

Within the framework of the conference, a large-scale plan for the reconstruction of Ukraine will be presented, a business forum and panels on the restoration of the main areas of the economy and the social sector will be held. Ukraine will present a plan for the recovery of the state, and separate meetings will also deal with the fight against corruption and with the self-government reform.