The role of EU accession in shaping Ukraine's social policy

Following Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine's EU accession process has advanced rapidly, supported by substantial funding through the Ukraine Facility. This paper examines how accession is shaping Ukraine's social policy trajectory. Using a neoinstitutionalist framework focused on the interaction between formal and informal institutions, it analyses the human capital chapter of the Ukraine Plan against the background of Ukraine's fragmented social protection system and the EU's evolving enlargement priorities. The analysis finds that EU conditionality strongly reinforces rule-of-law and economic benchmarks, while the social principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights remain largely non-binding. At the same time, the securitisation of accession has directed early investment towards priorities aligned with broader European strategic interests. Reforms such as the transition to a purchasing-based model of social services introduce market-oriented governance into a system characterised by entrenched informality and limited administrative capacity. This produces a hybrid welfare configuration that fits neither established welfare-state typologies nor the conventional post-communist regime type, raising doubts about whether accessiondriven reform can generate substantive institutional change rather than formal compliance.