Chairman of the Board of the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms is confident that next year our state must have new consolidated rayons.

According to Ihor Koliushko, if «the rayon issue» fails to be considered by the Verkhovna Rada or if the Parliament doesn’t vote for it, we’ll have to maintain 468 (the occupied Donbas and Crimea not being taken into account) rayon administrations and rayon councils, whereas these institutions have been useless for a long time. To crown it all, they hamper decentralisation and power delegation to hromadas. But we must act decisively to complete the reform. Rayon administrations and councils are putting spokes in the wheel of many AHs, actually depriving them of power. Finally, it is a strategic issue: lack of the proper or at least comprehensive administrative and territorial division of the country is harmful for its development.