Reforming the administrative and territorial structure is an integral part of administrative and territorial reform aimed at optimizing territorial administrative system, organizing relations between different levels of power and, at last, promoting the life quality of every rural or urban citizen. Ukraine always had a number of projects, concepts and programs on society transformation. But all of them “remained on a paper”. Therefore, during the meeting of Swiss-Ukrainian Project “Decentralization Support in Ukraine” (DESPRO) that took place on 29 February 2012, the experts discussed the possibility of a series of reforms in Ukraine and their distribution among the people at large.

 

Mr. Anatoliy Tkachuk, Director of Civil Society Institute, told the audience about the efforts related to local self-governance and administrative and territorial reforms in Ukraine within 2008 through 2012. The speaker highlighted a number of bills, including “On the Concept of Local Self-Governance Reform”, “On Local Initiatives”, “On Service in Self-Governing Bodies” and “On Territorial Structure of Ukraine”. Despite the formal existence of several concepts of local self-governance and administrative and territorial reform, one can say for sure that on a system level, the identified elements are not structured and seem pretty doubtful in municipal and political environment.

 

Mr. Yuriy Ganuschak, Verkhovna Rada Deputy, introduced the reform of territorial power organization and optimization of local budgets formation. From his point of view, to ensure high life quality, irrespectively of citizens’ residence, it is necessary to provide the following: to open the possibilities for business development throughout the Ukraine; to reduce donations for territorial communities; to eliminate the duplication of mandates of public power at different administrative and territorial levels; to let the executive governments be free from inappropriate functions and to delegate the majority of responsibilities to local self-government. But the above is not possible without reforming the administrative and territorial structure and local self-governance.

 

At the end of the meeting Mr. Ihor Koliushko, Chairperson of the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms, spoke on “Administrative reform in the context of power decentralization and local self-governance reform”.

 

Besides Expert Board members, representatives of Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, NASU Institute of Sociology, Regional Development Association, National Academy of Public Administration and Coordination Center for Economic Reforms under the President of Ukraine took part in a meeting.