As of 1 July 2025, a total of 678 valid cooperation agreements had been concluded between communities in Ukraine, which is an increase of 63 compared to the previous quarter. A total of 893 communities have joined this process, demonstrating steady growth of 54.

Trends and areas of cooperation

According to monitoring by the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, communities most often join forces in the following areas:

• social services, education and healthcare — 401 projects;
• urban planning and improvement, housing and utility services, and environmental protection — 241 projects;
• other areas (economy, culture, security, and others) — 220 projects.

This indicates that cooperation between communities is continuing to shift from formal initiatives to a real tool for solving local problems.

Leaders by number of cooperation projects:

• Rivne region — 90 agreements;
• Dnipropetrovsk region — 66 agreements;
• Poltava region — 64 agreements;
• Kharkiv region — 45 agreements;
• Cherkasy region — 43 agreements.

Likewise, the leaders are the Lviv, Odesa, Volyn and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, which consistently demonstrate a high level of interest in community partnerships.

Opportunities and challenges

Following the approval of the new administrative and territorial structure in 2020, community cooperation has become an effective mechanism of strengthening capacity, reducing costs, and improving service quality. However, there are still several challenges in practice:

• lack of public awareness of legal and financial mechanisms for community cooperation;

· complexity of coordination between communities of different sizes and capacity levels;

• need for methodological and project support from the state and donor organisations.

Read more detailed information on the monitoring results for the second quarter of 2025 HERE