UKRAINE’S GREEN COURSE: IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION’S EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The European Green Deal has become an important framework for Ukraine’s post-war recovery, European integration, and advancement towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study aims to generalize the European Union's experience in implementing the European Green Deal in Ukraine’s green course through the prism of the eight strategic clusters of the European Green Deal, including climate policy, energy, circular economy, construction, transport, agriculture, biodiversity, and zero pollution. The methodological basis of the research combines the analysis of legal and strategic documents, systematization of the European Green Deal instruments by clusters, and the use of two international indices—the Index of Sustainable Development Goals and the Environmental Performance Index—to assess Ukraine’s progress in areas related to the Green Deal and relevant SDGs. The findings show that Ukraine has already formed a basic regulatory framework for the green transition and has made progress in aligning its policies with European approaches. At the same time, the results remain uneven across sectors. The study identifies several key gaps: between regulatory approximation and practical implementation; between sectoral green transition goals and actual structural change; between the scale of Green Deal objectives and Ukraine’s institutional and financial capacity; and between strategic commitments and the monitoring of measurable outcomes. The analysis demonstrates that implementing the EU experience in Ukraine should be viewed not only as an element of European integration but also as a mechanism for building a recovery model compatible with the SDGs. It is concluded that transforming Ukraine’s green course into an effective instrument of sustainable development requires stronger institutional coordination, more consistent financing, better monitoring systems, and deeper integration of environmental priorities into reconstruction policy.