The war is not an obstacle to the transparency of the local self-government. February saw the adoption of the Law of Ukraine “On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” on Ensuring Transparency of Local Self-Government”. In order to clarify the key provisions of Law No. 3590-IX, the U-LEAD with Europe Programme held a series of open information events for local self-government officials in June and August.
One of the info sessions featured the author of the relevant draft law — Roman Lozynskyi, MP of Ukraine, First Deputy Chairman of the Committee on the Organisation of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning. Together with the U-LEAD team, he explained the steps to be taken by the local self-government to implement the provisions of the law on ensuring the transparency of local self-government.
New requirements for conducting plenary sessions of the council and meetings of standing commissions
The Law entered into force on May 15. Therefore, starting from this day, local self-government bodies must ensure the use of the state language at the sessions of local councils by all present. From that moment on, local self-government bodies must publish and provide upon request draft agendas for meetings of the standing commissions of the council. Furthermore, there is a new rule stating that the opinions and recommendations of standing commissions are accepted by open roll-call voting, and their results are recorded in the minutes of commission meetings.
In addition, the Law set out the obligation to publish and regularly update public information in the form of open data on the property rights of municipalities, villages, towns, cities, city districts on the unified state web portal of open data and on the official websites of local self-government bodies.
As of August 15, the provisions of the Law have entered into force, obliging local councils to make video recordings, as well as to store and publish videos of plenary sessions of councils and meetings of standing commissions.
However, the provisions of the law regarding the live online broadcasting of plenary sessions of the council and meetings of standing deputy commissions will not become mandatory until 30 days after the termination or cancellation of martial law in Ukraine.
How to properly implement the law in practice
Based on the experience of local self-government, many local councils have broadcast their sessions online even before the adoption of the relevant law. Most often, this practice applied to plenary sessions of councils, and to a lesser extent, to meetings of standing commissions. Roman Lozynskyi extended his appreciation to these local self-government bodies for this, because they inspired the Parliament to adopt new legislation.
He emphasised, however, that the law does not prohibit the organisation of live broadcasts even now, before martial law is lifted. Therefore, those local councils that broadcast their meetings earlier can safely continue doing so in the future.
Victoria Trotsenko, Head of the Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Donetsk Oblast, stressed that local councils should update their by-laws, since the new law will affect the arrangement of plenary sessions of the local council and meetings of its standing commissions. For instance, the Rules of the Council should set forth the procedure for organising the broadcast and video recording of the meetings of the council and commissions, the procedure for storing the videos and publishing them. The council must also designate persons responsible for these processes and purchase the necessary equipment for this.
In turn, according to Mykhailo Shelep, Adviser on Decentralisation and Local Self-Government of the Regional Office of U-LEAD in the Rivne Oblast, the implementation of the provisions of this Law requires officials to better understand the Law of Ukraine “On Access to Public Information”. After all, according to the new Law, the video recording of the part of the meeting that deals with issues containing information with restricted access should not be broadcast and made public. Therefore, it is important to correctly apply the procedure for restricting access to public information provided by law, namely the application of the so-called “three-fold test”.
Thus, the introduction of martial law did not suspend the provisions in Ukrainian legislation obliging local self-government bodies to follow the principles of transparency and openness. It is essential to understand this in the context of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU.