The parliamentary office for local self-government was established at the Verkhovna Rada, Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman said at a meeting with representatives of all-Ukrainian associations of local self-government bodies on Friday.

"We will fully provide the heads of local self-government bodies with all necessary support - technical, legal, expert, logistical - all that will be needed,” he said. “The Ukrainian Parliament is at your service, come to Kyiv, in this office you can receive all technical means to make your own work efficient."

"We need to further build up cooperation between the Parliament, parliamentary committees and local self-government bodies," the Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada said.

Groysman said that decentralization reform is the key one because "what will Ukraine be like, and how successfully would we manage to carry out reforms in many spheres of life" will depend on local self-government bodies. "You are the driving force of positive changes at the local level," he said addressing the audience. Implementation of this reform, said Groysman, is now the "steadfast stand" of the President of Ukraine, the Government, and the Parliament.

The Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada emphasized on the success of the first stage of implementation of this reform, stressing that there are still a lot of tasks to settle in the future. "I expect that regeneration of local self-government bodies will become additional powerful energy to make these changes," he said, adding that the Parliament approves all necessary decisions to ensure implementation of the reform of power decentralization. "The Parliament today is your ally more than ever before," said Groysman, adding that the Parliament adopted a number of decisions to ensure efficient development of local self- government and building-up of a European model of state government.

In addition Groysman pointed to amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine in the part of decentralization, describing them as "revolutionary," and thanks to them effective local self-government will be built at the level of regions and districts on the principles of ubiquity, financial soundness and subsidiarity, and introduced a system of effective control over the activities of local self-government bodies. "There will be constitutional guarantees of steadfastness of local self-government development,” he said. “This will allow us once and forever to distance ourselves from the post-Soviet centralized system and make an historic choice on the path of our European integration and building-up of a real European state."

The Chairperson of the Parliament congratulated participants of the meeting with the completion of local elections and the election of a new composition of local self-government bodies.