The project aims at enhancing the capacity of the civil society to engage in economic policymaking in Ukraine. It revolves around a Public Initiative established by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting in 2018. The Initiative is an informal network of CSOs from different regions of Ukraine that care about the improvement of the business climate. Activities of the Initiative aim at monitoring the implementation of customs reform and promoting dialogue between the authorities, business, and other stakeholders, that have interest in implementing the institutional customs reform according to the principles of good governance and free trade.

The overall objective is enhancing the capacity of the civil society to engage in economic policymaking in Ukraine through CSO networking, by promoting activities of the civil society initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs”.
Two specific objectives are:
1) Strengthening civil society initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs”
2) Facilitating policy dialogue between civil society and public authorities aimed at the implementation of customs reform.

In the long term, the project will enhance the capacity of the civil society to engage in economic policy making in Ukraine through CSOs networking, which will be confirmed by facilitated policy dialogue between CSOs and public authorities on customs reform and involvement of CSOs at all stages of the reform implementation.

The expected outcomes include strengthened Public Initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs” (with more members, their institutional and analytical capacity strengthened, and the Initiative being considered an effective tool for policy dialogue and advocacy) as well as intensified policy dialogue between civil society and the state on customs reform (more structured and meaningful participation of CSOs in customs reform process).

Outputs will comprise: functioning Initiative “For Fair and Transparent Customs” (with min 25 members), intensified policy dialogue on customs matters (the Initiative representatives participate in relevant Public Councils and Working Groups, min 30 public discussions are held in Kyiv and regions with no less than 1200 participants in total), min 12 advocacy campaigns, 3 waves of business opinion surveys with min 1000 respondents per wave, min 50 analytical and information documents, no less than 10 trainings and 12 networking events for the Initiative members.