“The decentralisation reform creates new opportunities for protecting the interests of the Carpathian region, highland territories, and also helps develop infrastructure, tourism, investment potential,” said Oleksandr Sayenko, Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.

“In 2014, I was appointed adviser to then Vice Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who began implementing the decentralisation reform. It is already possible to sum up the results, and today it's nice to see what decentralisation has given, and we are no longer debating whether it is needed, but talking about how to improve it and accelerate it, and also to extend it significantly to the Carpathian region,” he stressed during the IV Local Development Forum, held in Truskavets on 27 June.

Oleksandr Sayenko stressed that today it is very important to ensure the reform continuation in the transitional political period, and in this regard the Government has several initiatives. He also noted that special attention at this stage is required by rayon centres and cities of rayon significance that will become centres of the future amalgamated hromadas.”

“In recent times, serious attention has been paid to cities of oblast importance, but cities of rayon significance did not feel all the benefits of decentralisation. Therefore, we, in conjunction with MinRegion, have developed a draft law in order to recognise cities of rayon significance capable by 2020 so that next year they have all the necessary base, currently available to AHs. And this is very important for the Carpathian region, because there are a lot of cities of rayon significance, which today have to take full advantage of the decentralisation reform,” the Minister added.

Also, according to him, the Government has decided to direct part of the subvention, allocated by the state for social and economic development, the funds of the State Fund for Regional Development, in the first place, to priority projects of cities of rayon significance and rayon centres.

“It is very important that the Government approved a concept that defines all the peculiarities of all policies implemented by the Government in line with the Carpathian region. We are developing a plan of action, we have several legislative initiatives in Parliament. This is a very important stage in the decentralisation reform. Therefore, the main thing is that in complex the infrastructure, that we will develop, more support to the cities of rayon significance, lobbying the interests together and enshrining the basic principles of decentralisation in the Constitution will give a powerful positive result,” summed up Oleksandr Sayenko, adding that the Ukraine-EU summit will soon be held, where it is also important to raise the issue of the Carpathian region development.

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