Ukraine’s accession momentum at risk as anti-corruption roadmap falters

The roadmap agreed between Kyiv and Brussels to restore confidence in Ukraine’s reform agenda is showing alarming signs of paralysis, just three months after it was politically endorsed as a trust-rebuilding mechanism tied to the country’s EU path, writes Sergiy Sydorenko, chief editor of EUalive’s partner European Pravda.

The document, informally known in Brussels and Kyiv as the “Kachka-Kos plan”, after Deputy Prime Minister Taras Kachka and European Commissioner Marta Kos, who formally endorsed it, emerged from a symbolic and politically significant EU Council meeting held in Lviv on 11 December 2025. At that meeting, Ukraine received its first accession benchmarks – the concrete criteria that must be met to move forward in EU membership talks.

At the same time, the Ukrainian government and the European Commission, in the presence of representatives from all member states, agreed on a focused list of priority steps designed to rebuild confidence after the events of 22 July, when Kyiv’s anti-corruption reforms suffered a major setback.

For the EU, the plan quickly evolved into something far more consequential than a political declaration by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Taras Kachka. It became an informal but central credibility test for whether Ukraine remains capable of delivering the rule-of-law and anti-corruption reforms expected from a candidate country.

European Commissioner Marta Kos publicly underlined this logic, explaining that the plan was created precisely because trust among member state capitals had been damaged. Ukraine committed to implementing all 10 points within one year, effectively making 2026 the decisive timeline.

Three months later, the results are deeply troubling.

According to the first expert monitoring under the “Membership Check” initiative, Ukraine has completed only 9 points out of a possible 100, despite already using up 25% of the available time.

For many in Brussels, this is not a technical delay but a political warning sign.

Although the Kachka-Kos plan formally exists outside the accession procedure, in practice many EU capitals now see it as a proxy indicator of whether broader accession reforms are real or merely declarative. Its focus is deliberately narrow: anti-corruption safeguards, judicial reform and rule-of-law guarantees.

The monitoring is being carried out by a coalition of eight expert organisations led by the New Europe Center, alongside groups specialising in judicial reform, anti-corruption policy and EU integration. Their methodology prioritises final legislative or institutional outcomes rather than political statements, working groups or draft concepts.

In other words, process alone no longer counts.

A reform idea can receive only minimal credit. Registering a draft law in parliament can raise the score modestly. Only actual adoption and implementation can lead to a full result.

This is where the problem becomes most visible.

Only two of the 10 points have reached even the modest threshold of 20% implementation. One concerns the appointment of internationally vetted members of the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Justice, an area that requires execution rather than new legislation. Another concerns judicial integrity declarations, although even there the progress is considered partial because the relevant proposal does not yet cover Supreme Court judges, despite the roadmap’s explicit requirement.

At the other end of the scale, four points are clear laggards.

Ukraine’s swift U-Turn: restoring anti-corruption independence amid western pressure

Two of them expose the continuing failure of prosecutorial reform, an issue that both the European Commission and independent experts had already flagged last year. Yet Kyiv has so far given no visible signal that it intends to resolve these concerns.

The review of procedures for selecting and dismissing prosecutors currently scores zero, with monitors concluding that there is no implementation progress at all.

A separate requirement to restore competitive selection for senior prosecutorial appointments has received just 0.5 points, reflecting minimal discussion but no structural fix. This point is politically sensitive because it is directly linked to the rollback of anti-corruption and prosecutorial safeguards adopted on 22 July 2025.

While some anti-corruption elements were later restored, the prosecutorial dimension remains effectively frozen.

Other critically weak areas include forensic tools for NABU investigations and the development of internal anti-corruption control systems – both considered key credibility indicators for EU partners.

Several other elements, including the overhaul of the Criminal Procedure Code, reform of the State Bureau of Investigation, and the involvement of international experts in judicial appointments, remain stuck at the level of declarations and informal drafting, without even reaching formal legislative registration.

For EU capitals already uneasy after last year’s setbacks, the implications are becoming increasingly serious.

The plan was never meant to be symbolic. It was designed as a concentration of the most politically urgent rule-of-law demands that underpin both the accession benchmarks and the restoration of trust.

That is why the current pace matters far beyond the document itself.

Kyiv may argue that parliament is functioning imperfectly, but this explanation carries little weight in Brussels. From the EU’s perspective, the issue is not which institution is blocking progress, but whether the Ukrainian state as a whole can deliver on the commitments it made.

This is the larger political risk now facing Kyiv.

If a country cannot move on a 10-point emergency roadmap focused on its highest-priority reforms, doubts inevitably grow over its capacity to adopt the hundreds of laws still required for EU membership.

For that reason, the Kachka-Kos plan has become more than a technical checklist. It is now the clearest available test of whether Ukraine can restore reform momentum, rebuild trust with member states and prove that its EU trajectory remains institutionally credible.

The original article in Ukrainian can be found here.

Caption: Taras Kachka, Ukraine’s Deputy Economy Minister and Trade Representative, meets with EU Commissioner Marta Kos to discuss the country’s accession progress. Following the technical opening of clusters 3, 4, and 5, Ukraine has committed to integrating all key benchmarks into its national program (NPAA) and completing the necessary reforms by 2027, he wrote on X on 17 March.