National Bank of Ukraine plans to initiate Ukraine's accession to SEPA in 2024

National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor, Andriy Pyshnyi, reported the information.

"Our goal is to ensure that the national system of regulation and supervision in the financial services sector complies with European norms and standards through the implementation of relevant EU legislation," the statement says. According to Pyshnyi, Ukraine has made significant progress in improving legislation for the non-banking sector and will begin a transition period for the insurance market in early 2024, which should lead to full compliance with European standards of regulation and supervision.

Pyshnyi assured that he would maintain a high pace of modernization of banking legislation. “The next step is to improve the requirements for the capital structure of banks, which will further enhance the reliability of our banking system. EU membership implies free movement of capital,” he added. The NBU will work to ease currency restrictions, move to greater exchange rate flexibility, and return to inflation targeting in line with the strategy we have developed.

"We have also done a thorough groundwork and next year we plan to initiate the process of Ukraine's accession to the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), which will allow us to take another step towards financial European integration," the NBU governor emphasized.

What is known about Ukraine's accession to the EU

On November 8, the European Commission recommended starting the process of negotiations on Ukraine's accession to the EU.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated that Ukraine was successfully moving forward with European integration and was fighting hard for European values, so Ukraine's membership in the EU would mean its ultimate victory.

Subsequently, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said that he believed Ukraine was not ready for EU membership, but would not block the start of accession negotiations.

At the same time, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called for negotiations to begin by the end of 2023.

On November 13, members of the European Parliament called on the Council of Europe to decide on December 14-15 to start negotiations on Ukraine and Moldova's accession to the EU.

At the same time, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who arrived at the EU summit, said that his position had not changed: Ukraine is not ready to join the EU.

On Thursday, December 14, the European Council decided to start accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova, and also granted candidate status to Georgia. The EU is ready to start official negotiations on December 18.