Ukraine - February 2023

An investigation by openDemocracy revealed EU officials have been privately sharing concerns over Ukraine’s ongoing labour law reforms that mirror those raised by domestic and international trade unions, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and labour rights activists. Critics of the reform process say it runs against the ILO ‘social dialogue’ and EU’s ‘social market economy’ systems, with the Council of Europe noting reforms to date have “mostly resulted in the deterioration of employment conditions.” The Ukrainian government maintains the reforms are necessary as the country’s current labour laws date to the Soviet era. As the reforms are taking place under martial law, domestic trade unions and activists have been unable to repeat the large scale protests that forced parliament to drop the same reform process in 2020.

Note: Russia’s war on Ukraine directly implicates the Russian government in nearly all aspects of Ukrainian life and the performance of its political and democratic institutions. Any decline in Ukraine’s democratic attributes associated with the reported events does not necessarily, and in many cases, in no way indicates responsibility of the Ukrainian government or its people.

Sources: openDemocracy, Council of Europe