With this
impending deadline in mind, a campaign to ratify the draft
law on freedom of information is still going strong. International
NGOs and representatives of Ukrainian civil society
want to see parliament pass the bill before the summer recess, which effectively starts on July 6.
Adopting the proposed law would show high-level commitment to
providing access to information for citizens, a crucial step in
Ukraine’s intermittent struggle against corruption and impunity.
Once parliament reopens in autumn, Kyiv will be making the final preparations for
Vilnius, when Ukraine expects to sign its extensively negotiated
Association Agreement with the EU. This, of course, promises to open
up new avenues for bilateral
cooperation, including political association, economic integration,
and visa liberalisation. But there are creeping doubts about whether
the agreement will be concluded, and the official EU messages are
becoming increasingly unyielding in tone.
In his speech
at the end of May before the EU
Neighbourhood East Parliamentary Assembly,
Štefan Füle, European
Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, hailed the
forthcoming summit as an unprecedented opportunity for ‘real
transformation in the post-Soviet space’.
Ukraine is
furthest along in the process, but Moldova,
Georgia and Armenia all look set to initial their drafts, paving the
way for full Association Agreements in the future.
With
Azerbaijan, talks are barely limping along, plagued by mutual
disappointment. Baku is unhappy with the EU’s lack of engagement
with the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; the EU is frustrated by
Baku’s miserable human rights record (though it should be noted
that Brussels has fewer scruples when it comes to bilateral energy
agreements).
The Summit
could represent a significant achievement for both EU foreign policy
and Ukraine – but there is also a serious risk that the agreement
will be delayed pending progress on democratic reforms. Though he
offered ‘transformation’, Füle
also made it clear that the process
is contingent on the ability of Eastern Partnership governments to
demonstrate genuine commitment to reform, and his remarks contained a
cautionary note: ‘The summit can
deliver only to the extent to which partners are able to deliver on
reforms.’
More
recent remarks by the EEAS
Chief Operating Officer, David O’Sullivan,
strongly indicate that Kyiv must heed Füle’s
advice.
O’Sullivan’s repeated references to the need for tangible
judicial
reforms
– and soon – should be setting off alarm bells in Parliament.
Ukraine’s perceived unwillingness to ‘walk the walk’, as
O’Sullivan put it, could halt the process even at this late stage
in the game.
Depending
on the outcomes, Vilnius could also generate unfavourable
comparisons, with Ukraine and Azerbaijan cast as the recalcitrant and
regressive regimes of the region. Judicial reform is a central part
of the EU’s dialogue with both countries. Azerbaijan has already
turned its back on a key
recommendation from the EC
regarding freedom of expression legislation. In
April, the country extended its already draconian defamation law to
include online defamation – one of the issues positively addressed in
Ukraine’s draft freedom of information bill.
Passing the
law would
send a much-needed signal regarding
the direction of political will in Kyiv. O’Sullivan very clearly
outlined the three most pressing obstacles to concluding the agreement: electoral reform following numerous irregularities in the
October 2012 parliamentary elections; positive progress on the
Tymoshenko case; and judicial reform. At this point, given the
countdown until Vilnius, action on the third obstacle looks like the
only realistic option for Ukraine.
The passage
of the draft law would open up the process of government, encouraging
transparency and accountability in the areas of urban planning,
municipal infrastructure projects and public procurement. These, says
Oleksii Khmara, Director of Transparency International Ukraine,
remain significant impediments to the country’s economic and
political development.
The new law is wide-ranging, and tightens
procedures for asset declaration by public officials as well as
hardening administrative sanctions
for violation of the Access to Public Information Law. It also
addresses the notorious tricky balance between privacy vs. right to
information, by amending the Data Protection Law and the Law on
Archives. In the area of media freedom, it removes the default
assumption that all critical comments constitute defamation unless
the author can prove otherwise, which has restricted freedom of
expression and contributed to a practice of self-censorship among
journalists.
According
to the Centre for Law and Democracy,
Ukraine’s draft in its full
form would be one of the best right to information laws in the world.
In the context of the unfolding NSA scandal in the US and the
international debate on government whistleblowers, a thoughtful and
comprehensive approach to the complex challenges of public
information access, privacy, and data protection could be a powerful
political tool.
Celia Davies is an expert in freedom of expression and intern at Transparency International Ukraine.
