The Ukrainian economy in Europe

The Institute for World Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (IWE HAS) organized a workshop on November 24, 2006 entitled The Ukrainian Economy in Europe with the purpose of bringing together knowledge of the Ukrainian economy from Ukraine itself, Austria (an old EU member) and Hungary (a new EU member and neighbouring country to Ukraine). Researchers were invited from the Institute for Economy and Forecasting of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences (Valery Heyets and Volodymyr Sidenko), and the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (Vasily Astrov). Mihály Simai and András Inotai from the IWE HAS took part as session chairs, and Sándor Meisel and Zsuzsa Ludvig contributed papers. The presentations covered a wide spectrum of challenging and relevant Ukrainian economic issues, including the general macroeconomic and sociological scene, the topical issue of energy, the process of WTO accession, and FDI flows. Special attention was paid to EU–Ukrainian relations, including up-to-date information on the EU– Ukraine ENP Action Plan and such challenging questions as the prospects of Ukrainian EU membership and the feasibility of parallel integration processes with the East (within the CIS area) and the West (within the EU). Our choices of subject were approved by the rather wide audience. Lectures were followed by interesting discussions involving experts, students, officials and researchers from various institutions. This publication covers the essence of all the presentations and is intended to spread the professional value of the event more widely. The event and the whole project were sponsored by the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office (ASO) in Budapest.