The Council of Europe is helping Ukraine to take forward the decentralisation reform using the tools of good governance for the recovery and development of municipalities.

The Action Plan of the Council of Europe for Ukraine reaffirms this commitment. This was stated by Oleksandra Azarkhina, Deputy Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, during the 17th meeting of the European Committee on Democracy and Governance of the Centre of Expertise for Good Governance (CDDG) in Strasbourg.

In wartime, Ukrainian municipalities face unprecedented challenges. The main task of the state today is to support their recovery. To this end, the Ministry of Reconstruction offers a number of projects, including the creation of municipality support expert teams together with partners, participation budgets, mechanisms for attracting funds from the State Fund for Regional Development, including on the Diia platform, as well as digital tools, such as the Geoinformation System (GIS), to monitor the ongoing situation in municipalities, and the #DREAM digital restoration ecosystem, which ensures transparent and efficient implementation of restoration projects.

The key legislative initiatives include the reformatting of local state administrations into prefectural-type bodies, new principles of service in local self-government bodies, financial decentralisation mechanisms, tools for public participation in the municipal decision-making process, etc.

“Despite the large-scale war, Ukraine continues its decentralisation reform using the tools of good governance. I would like to thank the Council of Europe for its support, in particular for the unparalleled support plan for Ukraine. New challenges require strategic solutions, so it is vital that we share a common vision of Ukraine as a developed European state with powerful municipalities and democratic governance,” said Oleksandra Azarkhina.

In December 2022, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe approved the Action Plan of the Council of Europe for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” 2023-2026. The total budget of the cooperation programme is about EUR 50 million, which is the largest budget in the history of the Council of Europe Action Plan for individual countries.