Estonia, Sweden sign joint declaration on development cooperation in Ukraine

TALLINN -  Estonia and Sweden on Wednesday signed a joint declaration on development cooperation in Ukraine.

The joint declaration on development cooperation in Ukraine was signed today by Jonatan Vseviov, the secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mikael Eriksson, the Swedish ambassador to Estonia, with statements by Oleksandr Kushnir, charge d'affaires of the Ukrainian Embassy, and Ekke Nomm, the director of the Estonian School of Diplomacy, spokespeople for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

This fall, the Estonian School of Diplomacy will launch a development cooperation project financed by the Swedish Institute and the Estonian Foreign Ministry, providing training and development activities to increase the capability of the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine. The project will include training, seminars and study visits for diplomats of Ukraine and other Eastern Partners, as well as Ukraine's regional civil servants in charge of international relations. The total cost of the project co-financed by Sweden and Estonia is 337,000 euros.

"The joint declaration signed today is significant because it illustrates the continued strong joint actions of our three countries, as well as the results of timely development cooperation. In the early 1990s, Sweden was one of the first countries to offer us strong support and Ukraine, in turn, was the first country we helped under development cooperation in 1998. Therefore, in less than ten years, Estonia transformed from a recipient to a country that was able to support others. I am very glad that now we can contribute more efficiently to Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration, advance the implementation of the democratization process and good governance there, and develop education, business, e-services and cybersecurity," the secretary general of the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jonatan Vseviov, said.

"I am very pleased to see this important trilateral project going ahead. The Eastern Partnership has since long been a very important aspect of Swedish EU policy and is also a pillar in our national policies towards the Eastern Neighborhood. Developments in Ukraine play a crucial role for stability and security, and Swedish development assistance is being used to foster structural reforms and modernization. This program fits very well into this picture and will make an important contribution to the capacity-building efforts of the Ukrainian authorities. The Estonian expertise and legitimacy in working with Eastern Partnership countries will also be an invaluable asset," the Swedish ambassador to Estonia, Mikael Eriksson, said.

Ekke Nomm, the director of the Estonian School of Diplomacy, noted that the joint declaration was a follow-up to the ten-year engagement with the Diplomatic Academy of Ukraine, which also began as trilateral cooperation involving the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

"The new approach of this particular project means that in addition to Ukrainian diplomats we shall also focus on building the capacity of civil servants of Ukraine's regional administrations. They will be trained on topics such as Euro-Atlantic integration, development of cross-border cooperation, digitization of public services, information security and countering cyber threats in the course of hybrid warfare. DAU's ambition to become a regional hub in training diplomats from different countries will also be addressed."

The ceremony of signing the Estonia-Sweden-Ukraine joint declaration is available for watching on the Foreign Ministry’s YouTube channel: https://bit.ly/39uqDaq .