On 28 October 2019 the Memorandum of Co-operation was signed at the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine between the Association of Amalgamated Territorial Communities, the Volyn Regional Centre for Retraining and Advanced Training of Employees of State Bodies, Local Self-Government Authorities, State Enterprises, Authorities and Organisations and the Centre of Expertise for Good Governance of the Directorate General of Democracy of the Council of Europe.

Its purpose is to expand the network of Council of Europe partners to strengthen the capacity of local self-government authorities and their associations through training and advisory activities and qualification upgrade for local self-government officials and local councillors. As a result, trainings and services provided under the Council of Europe’s HRM School and Leadership Academy Programme is now available at the Volyn Regional Training Centre, which will cooperate with the Association of Amalgamated Territorial Communities and Council of Europe Programme “Decentralisation and local government reform in Ukraine”.

The Memorandum has become the second such document to be joined with the Council of Europe by the ATG Association and Regional Training Centres. The first such Memorandum was signed on 15 October this year with the Khmelnytsky Regional Training Centre.

Decentralisation requires the strengthening of the administrative capacity of local self-government bodies, and hence of a professional and competent local government service. The outcome of reforms in all areas strongly depends on this. This is underlined in the Council of Europe Toolkit on Modern and Effective Human Resource Management.