Material prepared by the Agency for Legislative Initiatives for LB.ua
With a 37-day delay, the Svyrydenko Government has finally submitted its Programme of Activities to Parliament. In July 2025, for the first time since the full-scale invasion, the Verkhovna Rada accepted the resignation of the Prime Minister — and, accordingly, of the entire Cabinet of Ministers — and formed a new Government.
The Svyrydenko Government is already the third Cabinet of Ministers formed during the tenure of the Ninth Convocation of the Verkhovna Rada. The first, led by Oleksii Honcharuk, had an approved programme but lasted less than six months. The second, led by Denys Shmyhal, operated without an approved programme altogether, yet remained in office for more than five years. This practice has revealed a paradox: formally, legislation grants Parliament the tools to exercise influence over the Government; in reality, political circumstances have allowed Cabinets to evade their programme commitments.
A Document of Trust and Parliament’s Oversight Tool
By law, a newly formed Cabinet of Ministers is required to develop and submit this document to the Verkhovna Rada within one month of its formation. This refers specifically to the formal registration of the relevant resolution in Parliament. The public presentation of the draft was purely Yuliia Svyrydenko’s initiative — the law does not require it. The Government approved the Programme of Activities on 10 September, and Svyrydenko stated that it would be sent to the Verkhovna Rada. However, it was registered in Parliament even later — only on 23 September. The issue of approving the Programme is to be considered within 15 days of its registration, approximately in early October.
The Programme of Activities is the main document for planning state policy. It forms the basis for the Government’s medium-term action plans (for a three-year period) and its priority action plans (for up to one year). The document should not only outline the Government’s priorities but also include clear goals, objectives, evaluation criteria and implementation timelines. Its approval represents both a vote of confidence in the Cabinet and a granting of immunity — the Verkhovna Rada may not consider any motion of responsibility against the Cabinet of Ministers within one year of the Programme’s adoption.
The Programme of Activities serves as the foundation for the Government’s annual reports to Parliament. Its existence is therefore a key instrument of parliamentary oversight. Based on the discussion of these reports, the Verkhovna Rada may determine whether the Government’s performance is satisfactory or not — and even adopt a resolution of no confidence in the Cabinet of Ministers. However, if there is no Programme, this entire logical chain collapses from the start, and Parliament’s oversight function loses its meaning. No Programme — no report. No report — no grounds for assessing the Government’s performance. No assessment — no accountability. This creates a vicious circle of irresponsibility, where the systematic evaluation of political decisions becomes impossible, as such decisions are taken largely on an ad hoc basis.
The Third Government of the Ninth Convocation: Lessons from Its Predecessors
The experience of previous Cabinets of Ministers shows that governments can function even without any strategic vision of their activities. However, assessing their performance without predefined indicators of achievement appears highly unlikely. For instance, the previous Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal (currently Minister of Defence of Ukraine) presented his Programme of Activities in 2020, which Parliament declined to approve even after revisions. The Rules of Procedure of the Verkhovna Rada allow the Government to resubmit its Programme for consideration, but not earlier than one year after its previous submission. Yet Denys Shmyhal did not do so in 2021, 2022 or the following years. As a result, Parliament had no opportunity to evaluate the Government’s performance in the manner prescribed by law.
The absence of regular reporting creates another challenge: each successive Government is effectively forced to ‘reinvent the wheel,’ having no clear understanding of what its predecessors achieved. The former Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman’s attempt to introduce the tradition of ‘transition books’ never became an established practice. As a result, Parliament is unable to assess whether the measures proposed by a new Cabinet are innovative initiatives or simply a continuation of previous policies.
The Svyrydenko Government’s Programme: For All Things Good, Against All Things Bad
The Svyrydenko Government’s Programme of Activities resembles many other strategic documents in Ukraine — a classic case of being ‘for all things good and against all things bad’: approve strategies, raise salaries, create jobs, digitalise services (the latter, incidentally, is almost the only proposed anti-corruption measure).
The Programme covers only the end of 2025 and the year 2026 — just 16 months in total. This is an unusually short planning horizon, suggesting that the Government itself does not envision a longer-term perspective. Structurally, the document consists of 12 priorities, 16 programme goals, and 129 operational tasks. From the previous programmes of the Honcharuk and Shmyhal Governments, it retains the system of assigning responsible ministries, which simplifies monitoring of their performance.
Many of the goals and performance indicators for 2026 are planned to be achieved ‘by New Year’s Eve,’ with a deadline of 31 December. Such end-loaded planning appears questionable, creating the impression that implementation will be postponed until the very end, rather than taking place gradually and predictably.
A telling case is that of the Ministry of Education and Science, which in 2026 is expected to upgrade the qualifications of 50,000 teachers under a new preschool education standard — one that has yet to be approved. This can be interpreted in two ways: either 12,500 teachers would undergo training each quarter, or all 50,000 would do so by 31 December. Both approaches would technically achieve the goal, yet their impact on the education process would differ significantly.
Old projects have also reappeared on the agenda — for example, the construction of a new building for the Kyiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre in Kyiv Oblast. This idea is not new: the same proposal was made in February 2022 by then Minister of Justice Denys Maliuska. At that time, the construction was estimated at over half a billion hryvnias, but the tender was cancelled in June 2022 due to spending cuts. In 2025, the construction of the new detention centre returned as a public investment project, with funding allocated in the 2025 State Budget.
A significant portion of the Programme’s goals and performance indicators consists of previously announced projects or ministry plans, or even activities already included in the Government’s Priority Action Plan for 2025. Examples include the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ initiatives such as ‘community rescue officer’ and ‘community police officer’ programmes; the establishment of mental health centres; the ‘e-Consul’ service; and the ‘money follows the teacher’ project — an idea first proposed as far back as 2019.
On the one hand, this approach promotes continuity of government, ensuring that projects are not ‘lost’ but continue to be implemented. On the other hand, the Programme resembles more a compilation of previous plans than a coherent strategic document. Moreover, tasks that the Government sets for itself but fails to deliver — for one reason or another — tend to accumulate and migrate from one programme to another, eventually remaining at the level of promises, plans, concepts or public consultations. No analysis is carried out to understand why something did not work, nor is there a proper assessment of the soundness of future plans and projects.
Will Parliament Have Enough Agency to Exercise Oversight of the Government?
Whether the Government will receive its one-year immunity from parliamentary no-confidence and whether the Verkhovna Rada will be able to use the oversight mechanism provided by law — we shall soon find out.
Parliament now has a chance to restore its oversight function, as this document serves as a benchmark for evaluating the efficiency and effectiveness of the Government as a whole and of its individual members. At the same time, the Verkhovna Rada risks further undermining its own capacity to hold the Cabinet of Ministers to account if it fails to approve the document. In that case, the Government will not be obliged to report to Parliament on its activities — and given MPs’ constant complaints about the lack of control over the Cabinet, such a political stance would be little more than a shot in the foot. The country would once again be left with another collection of promises, whose implementation and success could neither be measured nor properly monitored.
