The Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Ukraine have changed draft laws on Ukraine’s accession to the Single Euro Payments Zone
The Ministry of Finance, together with the National Bank of Ukraine, decided to make changes to the draft laws necessary for Ukraine to join SEPA — the Single Euro Payments Area. This was spoken by Serhii Nikolaychuk, the first deputy chairman of the NBU.
He explained that several months ago, relevant draft laws were submitted to the parliament, but they were withdrawn due to the change of government.
“In recent weeks, we have had active communication within the working group headed by the Ministry of Finance. We decided not just to resubmit these two draft laws, but to change something in view of the critical comments from the deputies and society, Serhiy Nikolaychuk noted.
According to him, among other things, a decision was made to reformat the mechanism for collecting information about bank accounts and safes:
“For now, the basic option is that the Ministry of Finance will do it itself. Appropriate structures are now being developed that will ensure this.
Nikolaichuk also expressed the hope that this will reduce the degree of tension and allow relatively quick voting of these draft laws in the parliament. Passing the changes will open the way to apply to the Single Payments Board, get approval and legally join SEPA, and then secure technical connectivity.
“We have been preparing for this for the past years. During the previous waves of SEPA expansion (to the Balkan countries, as well as Moldova), the processing of applications took from 6 to 12 months. I hope that in the case of Ukraine it will be faster, but it will still take some time, he added.
