“However, as is well known, good legislation is an important but not sufficient prerequisite for genuine reform. Both gas market and future electricity market and many measures, for example, regarding energy efficiency will be brought under great doubt in case of a failure to implement law provisions in real life. Failure does not necessarily mean ignoring. Sometimes, pretence is even more dangerous than complete disregard.
Pretending that the regulator is independent, Ukraine risks failing to create energy markets. What does this mean? The lack of a market means space for ‘rigged games’, ‘carve-up’, ‘split-up’ – everything that is called corruption. In the energy sector it is especially expensive because it is connected with the safety, welfare and comfort of the whole population of the country. Instead, market relations create conditions when all participants are in equal circumstances, when everyone is not indifferent whether someone receives certain privileges as a result of a conspiracy. Therefore, the market is a competition, which will be for the benefit of the consumer.
The role of the regulator in energy markets is to regulate not direct actions of the players but the conditions in which they operate, taking care of a field for competition that is equal and identical for all.
The relevant draft regulator law has not been passed in the Verkhovna Rada. Much controversy arose around the points that are not regulated by the European directives and where you need the Ukrainian consensus. With the purpose of resolving the issues at a professional and not a political level, and with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation, Strategic Advisory Group was created to unite Ukrainian experts, foreign experts, people’s deputies of Ukraine, and representatives of the Energy Community and the European Commission. The Group aims to develop amendments to the draft regulator law that will remove disputes regarding certain aspects, thus creating reliable legislative preconditions for real independence and professionalism of the regulator in the energy sector.”
