Professor Leonid Kisterskyi delivered a lecture on the European integration-related range of problems to IAPM students
On April 25, leading Ukrainian expert in the international technical assistance projects of the European Commission for Ukraine, member of the UN Scientific Council, Doctor of Economics, Prof. Leonid Kisterskyi was a guest of the student Debating Society of the Interregional Academy of Personnel Management. At the start of his visit, the distinguished guest met with Academy’s First Provost Volodymyr Yarovyi and Provost for International Relations Ihor Piliayev. Their talk concerned opportunities for cooperation in the area of joint education projects, as well as implementation of EU education programs using the Academy’s facilities. Also, the guest thanked the Academy’s governing body for the invitation, having emphasized that the student audience is the most efficient and up-and-coming for knowledge transfer.
The author of numerous professional publications in the key-note publishing houses of Switzerland, USA, Great Britain, Poland, Germany, former lecturer of the Brown and Stanford Universities (USA), University of Konstanz (Germany), Higher School of Business (Poland) chose “Instruments of European Integration for Ukraine” for a theme of his lecture. Addressing to students, Prof. Kisterskyi stressed that they would just become in ten years the driving force, which would decide the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the European Union. To become an EU member-state, each country must travel a long way of reforms. Ukraine also carries out such reforms; however, it’s only the beginning of the way. The expert pointed out that European integration is a two-way road. In its turn, the European Union supports the would-be members rendering them international technical assistance – that is to say, it transfers experience and knowledge, furthers introduction of reforming programs, arranges grants and tenders, i.e., free support for development and innovations that would lead the country to economic and social readiness to become a EU member. “European integration means, first of all, implementation of market-oriented reforms,” – Leonid Kisterskyi accentuated.
Among the problems of the European integration process, the guest singled out lack of efficient organization in the use of international technical assistance, absence of a coordinated national program aimed at maximum efficient use of international technical assistance and progressive implementation of reforms. As the speaker noted, the President of Ukraine issued on January 3, 2012 an executive order on improvement of attracting, using and monitoring international technical assistance to ensure real reforms in our state. Such changes will just need young, ambitious, active highly educated specialists and professionals, fully qualified, with foreign language skills, -- and this is an opening for young people in order to become familiar with the European integration processes and successfully fulfill their potential.
Of prime importance is that Prof. Kisterskyi’s lecture was not only of a theoretical but also of practical nature; the guest draw attention of the young people to the existence of numerous multibillion programs for youth in the field of cooperation of young people of the EUMS and other countries, as well as cooperation of tertiary institutions. The expert informed the Academy’s students of the EU youth programs having emphasized that they represent possibilities opened up for everyone and worth using to achieve personal success and facilitate progress in development of Ukraine.
By tradition, the gust of the Debating Society answered many questions of the audience relative to the public expenditures on social needs, double standards in the European integration policy and the like.
As a token of the meeting at the Academy, Prof. Kisterskyi presented to the academic library his monograph concerned with the ways to improvement of effectiveness of international technical assistance to Ukraine, while the Provost for International Relations presented to the guest IAPM’s own publication of the “Constitution, Manifestoes and Literary Heritage” of Pylyp Orlyk.