The modern development of Ukraine incorporates a multitude of features in all spheres of public life, including in the sphere of public administration, caused by internal and external phenomena and processes, among which the European integration and globalization influences take the main place. Therefore, the main objective of the paper is to evaluate the modernization of the legal system of Ukraine and the expansion of the legal space of the European Union. Application of the system of methods of scientific knowledge (historical and legal method, system and structural method, structural and functional method, classification method, method of theoretical and legal prediction) opened the opportunity to comprehensively analyse the mutual influence and reveal the essence of the mutual connection of transformations that occur in the legal system of Ukraine due to the expansion of the legal space of the European Union. It is established that the process of development and deepening of the regime of active cooperation of the EU with third countries at the political, legal, economic and cultural levels is characterized by two complementary tendencies – internal changes in the legal systems of sovereign states that cooperate with the European Union and an increase in the sphere of regulatory influence of European Union law. The paper focuses on the factors that hinder the process of pro-European transformation in Ukraine. Among them the author highlights the complexity of Ukraine's geopolitical situation, the high level of conflict in Ukraine's political environment, the scarcity of financial resources, the significant level of corruption in the state apparatus, the delay in governmental structures implementing the Association Agreement. It was reasonably concluded that the main result of the interaction of the national legal system of Ukraine with the legal space of the European Union is the change of methodological approaches to the analysis of the relation between the political borders of the European Union and the territorial sphere of the European legal area. This fact outlines a promising area of research in modern legal science, namely, the identification of patterns of formation of an optimal model of borrowing positive legal practices of the legal space of the European Union by Ukraine, provided the preservation of the national identity of the domestic legal system

Keywords: European policies, convergence of legal systems, legal reality, universal values of the European Union, human rights