On 1 January 2022, Ukraine’s Law on Inland Water Transport came into force. Fifty-four days later, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
I knew that law unusually well. Not because I am a lawyer or an expert in shipping, but because I had spent much of the previous two years working with the people trying to make the reform happen.
At a glance
The Challenge: Repeated unsuccessful legislative attempts and competing interests in Ukraine’s inland waterway sector.
The Approach: A year-long strategy combining stakeholder engagement, advocacy and multimedia outreach to help advance the reform.
The Result: Ukraine’s Parliament adopted the Law on Inland Water Transport in December 2020. The law entered into force in January 2022.
Before the vote
When I joined EU Assistance for Dnipro Transport Development in 2019 as its communication and stakeholder engagement expert, Ukraine had been trying to modernise its inland waterway legislation for years.
Transport operators, businesses and policymakers disagreed about how the sector should function, who should pay for maintaining the waterways and what greater competition would mean. These were genuine disagreements, not problems a clever slogan could solve.
A decade of unsuccessful attempts made me realise that another campaign explaining the proposed law would not be enough. I proposed a year-long communications and advocacy strategy built around sustained dialogue with the institutions involved in the reform and the public it was intended to serve.
Too often, communications is brought in to announce a decision once the difficult discussions are over. I wanted it involved while those discussions were still taking place.
Once the key stakeholders backed my approach, we organised consultations and roundtables with parliamentarians, engaged government institutions, business associations, civil society and journalists, and produced interviews, videos, infographics and opinion pieces to explain the reform to wider audiences. We also conducted vox pops with citizens to understand how they perceived the reform and whether they recognised its potential benefits.
This was stakeholder engagement and advocacy embedded in the reform process — not publicity after the fact.
On 3 December 2020, after a decade of legislative attempts, Ukraine’s Parliament finally adopted the Law on Inland Water Transport.
In November 2021, I published an opinion piece in NV Ukraine about the environmental and economic potential of river transport and Ukraine’s closer integration with Europe.
I was writing about greener transport, trade and long-term development. Three months later, those priorities were overtaken by Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Navigation on the Dnipro was severely disrupted, while Ukraine’s Danube ports became vital alternative trade routes. Yet the law remained in force, and work on its implementation continued.
Having spent several years working on EU-supported transport reforms in Ukraine — from road safety and infrastructure project cycle management to the National Transport Master Plan and inland waterways — I came to know the people behind these efforts: government officials, parliamentarians, businesses and civil society representatives.
I have seen their determination first-hand. And I believe that, with continued support from the EU and other international partners, they will rebuild and modernise Ukraine’s transport sector.
