Ukraine’s parliament plans to establish committee to focus on NATO issues

Soon, the Verkhovna Rada intends to establish a committee to align Ukrainian laws with NATO's standards.

The Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, said this in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"Since we are entering the eve of the Washington Summit, I am initiating the creation of a committee with NATO. The idea is to create a separate committee shortly to take over all the functions of bringing Ukrainian legislation to NATO standards. If we want progress in NATO, we must have people, who lead this topic in the parliament," explained the head of the parliament.

Stefanchuk stressed that Ukraine has two foreign policy vectors related to the European Union and NATO.

In addition, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada noted that while a separate committee is discussing the EU topic, the North Atlantic Alliance "for some reason does not have such parliamentary attention."

"That is why I would really like to see a committee created that would deal with NATO legislation because we have huge challenges: the Washington summit, where we must get an excellent result for Ukraine, and for this, there must be people who institutionally deal with these issues," Stefanchuk said.

For reference:

On September 30, 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk, and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal signed Ukraine's application for accelerated accession to NATO.

In 2023, a summit of NATO countries was held in Vilnius on July 11 and 12, one of the main topics of which was Ukraine.

In the final communique of the summit, published on the Alliance's website, the heads of state and government of the North Atlantic Alliance recognized Ukraine's progress on the path of Euro-Atlantic integration and confirmed that Ukraine's future lies with NATO.

Additionally, despite Russia's full-scale aggression and the daily obstacles of war, the Ministry of Defense remains committed to furthering professional education within the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The North Atlantic Alliance's DEEP program has already benefited 12,000 Ukrainian servicemembers in this effort.

In general, three things are essential for Ukraine to join NATO:

• civil democratic control,
• transparency of procedures,
• joint planning of military operations.

Also, 287 NATO standards have already been implemented in the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine, and by the end of 2023, it was planned to implement about 200 North Atlantic Alliance standards.

Recently, the Ministry of Defense created a two-level procurement system based on NATO standards.

In total, there are 1,135 standards in the North Atlantic Alliance, Ukraine has implemented about a quarter of them as of the end of November 2023.