Ukrainian municipalities are becoming stronger by joining forces, in particular through inter-municipal cooperation. This was emphasized by the participants of International Expert Exchange 2021: Partnership for Development, a conference organized by U-LEAD with Europe.
In his opening remarks Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine Oleksiy Chernyshov pointed out that decentralization promotes improvement in municipalities’ cooperation.
By uniting their efforts municipalities become stronger, and whole country becomes stronger as well… Thanks to decentralization, incomes of the local budgets have quadrupled – they went from UAH 80 bln in 2014 to almost UAH 300 bln in 2020.
According to Minister’s speech, it is expected that the following year will show even better results with UAH 437 bln in the local budgets.
The Minister said that during the first stage of the reform of the local self-government the state has handed over much of the power, resources and responsibilities to the local level, a new territorial foundation has been created for the activities of the local bodies of power, and instead of over 11 thousand small and incapable municipalities 1470 new ones were created. They enjoy equal status and authority and direct interbudgetary relations. Furthering the reform will require amendments to the Constitution in the part of decentralization, as well as bringing Ukraine’s legislation in accord with the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
At the same time, Deputy Head of the EU Delegation in Ukraine Remi Duflot emphasized that cooperation between municipalities is one of the keys to the successful development of the local self-government.
For the decentralization to be a success, we must very efficiently and actively find answers to numerous questions on which the local development depends… One of the foundations for the successful development of local self-government is the inter-municipal cooperation, this is especially true about smaller municipalities, those that have fewer than 50 thousand people.
Duflot remarked that to make such municipalities well-developed capital investment in needed as well as establishment of synergetic connections among municipalities on the regional level.
The Deputy Head of the EU Delegation said that in this regard U-LEAD with Europe Programme is a great assistant to municipal representatives. The Programme holds numerous training sessions, seminars and forums dedicated to various aspects of local development. In particular, thanks to U-LEAD’s efforts, more than 300 municipalities with more than 2 million citizens joined various development projects that amount to EUR 2 mln in total.
Also, Duflot said that in the field of decentralization U-LEAD is the most successful programme in the world. Since 2016 this project received EUR 153 mln. U-LEAD applies European approach in the framework of decentralization support in Ukraine.
U-LEAD Director Bastian Veigel spoke in his opening speech about how the Programme's experts help municipalities in the preparation of regional development projects.
We want to emphasize the extraordinary role of municipal development projects in terms of their economic and social development. We also want to emphasize that investment development projects are prepared in constant dialogue with residents and local companies to ensure that they meet local development priorities and contribute to improving welfare of the municipalities.
