On March 3 the President of Ukraine signed the Law “On Principles of State Regional Policy”.

The law provides the basic legal, economical, social, environmental, humanitarian, and organizational principles of regional policy as a component of local policy, and creates a legislative basis for implementation of new regional policy, which must embrace much wider spectrum of issues than just local development support.

Besides, the document defines purposes and priorities of regional policy, regional development strategies, responsibilities of regional policy subjects, principles of financial support and monitoring of regional policy implementation.

Definition of regional development framework through adoption of the Law “On Principles of State Regional Policy” is provided by the Agenda of Ukraine-EU association. The law allows (beside other things) to engage foreign investments in regional development projects.

According to the head of expert group of EU Project “Support to Ukraine’s Regional Development Policy”, Colin Maddock, adoption of the Law is one of the key indicators of efficient implementation of the Programme of budgetary support of regional policy in Ukraine by Ukrainian government.