Ukraine’s Accession to the WTO: Strategy and Impediments

This paper focuses on issues surrounding Ukraine’s internal efforts for WTO accession given the importance of completing the negotiation process prior to the December 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Conference. The paper is divided into two sets of issues: first, Ukraine’s prospects of acquiring WTO membership, including procedural questions, in the near future, and second, the substantive conditions for completing the accession process and the associated problems that require immediate attention. Among other matters, the paper describes the current procedure for WTO accession and proposes an optimum scenario for Ukraine’s membership, identifying the necessary measures, timeframes and risks that threaten the prescribed tasks. It also highlights major institutional problems that are hindering the harmonization of Ukrainian laws with GATT/WTO rules and offers a WTO-consistent legislative and regulatory action plan with specific proposals on amending relevant laws. The paper also illustrates the major problematic aspects of multilateralism that are impeding the completion of the negotiations. Furthermore, the author offers several proposals concerning approaches to and techniques for addressing these challenging issues.