NBU hopes for Rada's adopting amended draft laws on financial monitoring for joining SEPA

A significant obstacle to Ukraine's accession to SEPA - the single euro payments area - remains the inconsistency of Ukrainian legislation in the field of financial monitoring, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) hopes to resolve this problem after amending the draft laws under discussion, which attracted criticism and were withdrawn from the parliament due to the change of government, said Serhiy Nikolaychuk, First Deputy Governor of the NBU.

"Over the past few weeks, we have had active communication within the working group headed by the Ministry of Finance. We decided not to simply resubmit these two draft laws, but to make some changes in light of critical comments from deputies and society," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to Nikolaychuk, among other things, it was decided to reformat the mechanism for collecting information about bank accounts and safes: while the basic option is that the Ministry of Finance itself will do this, appropriate structures are currently being developed to ensure this.

"I hope that this will reduce the degree of tension and allow for a relatively quick vote on these draft laws in parliament," said the banker.

He explained that this would open up the opportunity for Ukraine to submit an application to the Single Payments Council, obtain appropriate approval and legally join SEPA, and then ensure technical accession, for which the National Bank has been preparing for the past few years.

"During previous waves of SEPA expansion (to the Balkan countries, as well as Moldova), consideration of applications took from six to 12 months. I hope that in the case of Ukraine it will be faster, but it will still take some time," Nikolaychuk added.