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Strengthening Good Democratic
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Council of Europe Strengthening Good Democratic
Governance and Resilience in Ukraine

News

IMC legal framework – round table discussion at the Parliament of Ukraine

3 June 2014

Yesterday, on 2 June 2014, following the initiative of the Parliamentary Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government and with the support of its partners, including the Council of Europe Programme “Strengthening the capacity of local authorities in Ukraine”, the round table discussion “Current issues of legal framework on co-operation of territorial communities” took place. The event was attended by members of the Ukrainian Parliament, representatives of central executive authorities, local self-government and its associations, NGOs and experts.
Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine – Minister of Regional Development, Construction and Municipal Economy of Ukraine Volodymyr GROYSMAN, when presenting the draft law of Ukraine “On co-operation of territorial communities” (registration No. 4756 dd. 24 April 2014 submitted by the Government of Ukraine), underlined that local governments should be provided with new tools to fulfil their functions. “We see that the countries with strong local government are developed and successful ones”, noted Mr Groysman.
Participants of the event discussed the organisational and legal framework of IMC as well as its principles, forms and mechanisms and the new opportunities to be available to communities in case of adoption of such a law. In general, the legal initiative was positively assessed and supported by participants, but they agreed that some aspects still require finalisation.

The French experience was presented by Mr Robert HERTZOG, Council of Europe expert, Professor of Law of Strasbourg Institute of Political Science, President of the Finance Association of France. For instance, French local government system is extremely territorially fragmented, with over 36,000 communes, over three quarters of them inhabited by less than 1,000 residents. In 2007 the budget of IMC institutions in France was 33 billion euro. Therefore, the expert stated that establishment of IMC legal framework is only a first step forward to the comprehensive local self-government reform and creation of effective mechanisms for high level services delivery to population. This idea was backed by other participants of the discussion, including Mr Anatoliy TKACHUK, Council of Europe expert, Director on Science and Development of Institute of Civil Society and Advisor to the Vice Prime Minister, who said “the draft law will not substitute Constitutional amendments, but will enable communities to become stronger”. The expert also reminded of the Council of Europe appraisals to relevant draft legislation: “draft law may generally be seen as kind of a step towards the beginning of regular co-operation between territorial communities still insufficient however to solve the problem of the fragmentary administrative-territorial system and the reinforcement of the capacity of all territorial communities through the mechanism of such co-operation.”
During the event the existing IMC projects were discussed. Mr Vadym PROSHKO, the Council of Europe expert, informed about the innovative practices admitted in the framework of the Council of Europe Best Practices Contest – 2013. Following the expert, not only the legal framework plays an important role in IMC development, but also IMC popularisation as such, overcoming fear by communities and incentives for their co-operation. The positive experience was presented by Pavlohrad mayor Mr Ivan METELYTSYA (winning project of the Council of Europe Best Practice Contest in 2013 – “Establishment of the comprehensive system of solid waste management on the territory of the sub-region “Western Donbas”). The mayor also commented on some articles of the draft law and presented his proposals.

Summing up the event its participants recommended to the Parliamentary Committee to consider the draft law and vote it in the first reading. It was also recommended to establish a task force of the draft law improvement and finalisation.
Mr Davyd ZHVANIA, Member of the Parliament of Ukraine, Head of the Parliamentary Committee on State Building and Local Self-Government, informed that the Committee should consider the daft law No. 4756 at its regular meeting on 4 June.