Helsinki, 17 January 2024
Finland continues to support the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine with four million euros in 2024–2025. Finland’s support emphasizes, disability inclusion, gender equality and prevention and combatting of violence against women.
The Council of Europe’s work is guided by the action plan for 2023–2026, which has been developed in close consultation with the Ukrainian authorities and that builds on the results achieved during the previous action plan (2018–2022).
The Council of Europe supports Ukraine in strengthening human rights, democracy and the rule of law to align them with European standards. The Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine is also supporting the country’s economic recovery and reconstruction. The priority is to support Ukraine’s EU accession.
Finland will support the Council of Europe’s action plan for Ukraine with four million euros in 2024–2025. Finland’s support will emphasizeon gender equality, the implementation of the Istanbul Convention preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, and disability inclusion. The support is allocated from Finland’s development cooperation funding.
“Supporting structural reforms is crucial for Ukraine’s future. It is important that Finland is cooperating with the Council of Europe in this matter”, says Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio.
The action plan focuses on strengthening the rights of the most vulnerable groups and war affected populations. In addition, the action plan supports Ukraine in implementing the anti-corruption strategy for 2021–2025 and in combatting money laundering and terrorist financing.
The Council of Europe action plans for Ukraine have been implemented since 2005, and Finland has supported the Action plans since 2014. Finland supported the previous four-year action plan (2018–2022) with 3.5 million euros. Despite of the Russia’s aggression, the Council of Europe was able to implement the Action Plan and support Ukraine in reform processes. Good progress was made in many areas, including combatting violence against women, the rights of minorities, the consideration of war crimes and human rights violations committed during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and the implementation of the rule of law reform.
Since the start of Russia’s invasion, Finland has supported Ukraine through development cooperation and humanitarian assistance funds totalling over EUR 570 million.
Source – Finnish Government