The successful implementation of European standards in Ukraine's agricultural sector depends less on passing laws than on the state's actual ability to enforce them, said former head of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection (2016–2019) and current serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Volodymyr Lapa, in an interview with the channel MinSelo.

"The issue is not simply writing into law that 'we comply with EU standards.' The key question is whether the state service is prepared to enforce the new rules and whether this works in practice at every enterprise and in every laboratory. Legislation provides for an audit of the state service's capacity by the Cabinet of Ministers, but it remains unclear whether such an audit has ever been conducted," he said.

According to Lapa, the real indicator of the situation is the statistics on violations recorded by the European side.

"If we look at the trend in notifications concerning Ukrainian products over recent years, we see that their number has essentially not changed. This means the control system has not qualitatively improved, and the implementation of standards without properly trained specialists risks remaining purely declarative," the expert said.

In his view, Ukraine must change its philosophy of oversight, shifting from process control to risk-based control, following the EU model, where businesses are responsible for safety and the state is responsible for the functioning of the system itself.

"The state should not control businesses as such, but rather the risks. If an inspector comes to an enterprise just to 'tick a box' or collect a bribe, that is imitation. The state must control the quality of its own inspector's work. Until we move to a model of controlling the controllers, we will continue to receive notifications," explained the former head of the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection.