ABSTRACT
While most scholars studying Europeanization and transfer focus on the policy developments of the recent years, mostly when the European Union was actively involved in the transfer, this chapter begins the analysis with the independence of the Ukrainian state and the emergence of asylum policies and laws. Thanks to this longitudinal approach, the seemingly predominant role of the EU in the transfer of policies to its neighbors can be qualified, as it is shown that until 2010, the EU had only a weak influence on asylum policies in Ukraine – in contrast to UNHCR. However, during the sectoral (VLAP) conditionality of the EU between 2010 and 2015, the EU was the major driver of asylum reforms in Ukraine. This chapter further reveals the interrelatedness of the transfer activities of the EU and a UN agency, which has so far received little scholarly attention. Indeed, the EU depended on UNHCR for its monitoring of policy change, whereas UNHCR benefited from and encouraged the EU insistence on asylum reforms under the conditionality. Complementing the existing predominantly institutionalist analyses to transfer, this research underlines the role of international actors’ strategies and relations among themselves.
