Kiev, 01/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - The EU Council's European Union Advisory Mission on civilian security sector reform in Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine) was officially launched on Monday 1 December. Its ambitions and expectations are high, its means relatively few, and the conditions for its launch extremely delicate, EUROPE noted during a visit to Kiev organised for a few journalists by EUAM from Friday 28 November until Tuesday 2 December.
European advisers at the casino. The mission - which is part of the European security and defence policy (ESDP) - is headquartered (HQ) in a large casino, especially equipped for purpose in the luxury Hotel Opera which is around 20 minutes on foot from Independence (Maidan) Square - the cradle of the revolution that overturned the power of Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych less than a year ago. This setting for the mission's HQ illustrates rather a delicate launch for the EUAM - despite it being a fairly normal EU mission. The HQ room is virtually empty except for a few tables, chairs and a coffee machine. Indeed, the IT equipment - especially the laptop computers - has been brought by the mission's members and belongs to the EU member state administrations from where the members have been seconded, or it is privately owned. The reason for this lack of equipment (there is no printer, for example) is the same reason for why the mission is still working in a hotel (which also provides refuge to the football team of Donetsk, the bastion-town of the pro-Russian separatists): the status of mission agreement (SOMA) has not yet been ratified.
Waiting for legal status. The SOMA, which has just been signed in Brussels, is expected to be ratified by the Ukrainian Parliament (the Rada) in the coming days or weeks. Indeed, the Rada has just held its first plenary session after the elections at the end of October. This situation brings some immediate - and not insubstantial - difficulties for the Europeans, however. Without this ratification, the EUAM has no legal personality in Ukraine. This means that the mission (whose members are currently acting under the umbrella of the EU delegation to Ukraine) is unable to rent offices, buy material, recruit staff or, quite simply, clear equipment through customs - as is the case for the computers that are currently sitting at Ukrainian customs. As Anders Landen, the head of the EUAM staff, stated: “everything is quite temporary” without the ratification of the SOMA - which “is a problem for us”. While ratification is considered a formality, the impatience and frustration of EUAM's members is palpable. The search for a new HQ has nevertheless already begun - but finding a suitable place, whose owner has “clean hands” is not easy in a country riddled with corruption and whose land registry is not the most rigorous or complete, the mission has fast realised.
Current and future size of the mission. The official launch of the EUAM means that initial operational capacity has been reached. In other words, the mission has enough human and logistical resources to carry out the initial tasks listed in its two-year mandate - providing strategic level advice to the Ukrainian authorities, both in Kiev and in the rest of the territory of Ukraine (which will soon be done), on implementing reforms in the civilian security sector, especially as regards the services of the militia and border guards and secret services. This capacity currently results in a staff of around 50, coming from around the EU (so-called “international” staff) and three local agents on temporary contracts governed by Ukrainian law. The objective is to reach a staff of 101 international members and 75 local members - which should come about in June 2015.
Shedding a Soviet heritage. The mission has been launched but it is only at initial stages. It is therefore a question, on the one hand, of forming contacts with Ukrainian negotiators from the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, and on the other hand, of analysing the situation - both as regards the institutional structure of numerous civilian security services, and as regards the draft reforms that must be launched and are the result of the agreement between the parties forming the new coalition at the Rada. In the view of Kalman Mizsei, the head of the mission, “radical change” is needed because it is the whole structure of the civilian security services that must be changed. The goal is to shed a Soviet heritage, where all the services - especially the militia and secret services (SBU) - combine the three functions that are normally separate in a state subject to the rule of law (in other words, the military, the police and the judiciary, with political interests interfering too). Moreover, these services often function as a state within a state. Political impetus at the highest level to start these reforms clearly exists, according to all sources that EUROPE met in Kiev, but there is still no consensus as to the precise way to do this.
Breadth of the challenges. The challenges to be addressed by the mission, or currently being so, are plenty and sizeable. Firstly, the services which must be reformed are at war, or rather - to use the expression from on the ground - are conducting “anti-terrorist operations” in Eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists, backed by the Russian army, are controlling part of the two Ukrainian regions (the “oblasts” of Donetsk and Luhansk). Then, the Ukrainian negotiators are in the midst of changeover at the current time, due to the formation of a new government. One of the biggest challenges, however, will be implementing the reforms in sufficient depth, as these services are not accustomed to being submitted to democratic control nor, in the case of the secret service, to civilian control.
Endemic corruption. Corruption being a problem in Ukraine is an understatement. In Appleby's view, it is “a real challenge” for the mission because corruption is “a parallel structure” within the apparatus of the state, which “undercuts everything”. Corruption is so endemic that it is rather one of the “principles” that define the very operation of the different security services, Mizsei states. The situation is not very different in the judicial system either, where the mission must also take action. Legal judgments are indeed rarely impartial. In this context, having former prosecutors as EUAM members should be an advantage, even if the mission cannot undertake actions such as prosecutions because it does not have an executive mandate. (JK)