Building the open access order: introduction

Ukraine is balancing at the edge between limited and open access order. Although the country lacks rule of law and business is closely interlinked with politics, political competition is still present, civil society has been developing and some markets are competitive. The transition stance of Ukraine is unstable, burdensome and dangerous. Only implementation of real deep structural reforms can make the transformation to open system easier and quicker. However, Ukrainian authorities do not conduct such reforms, often substituting them with technical policy changes (improving only some mechanisms), or introducing only temporal economic policy measures (like ‘belt tightening’).