Ukraine and Poland signed a Memorandum of cooperation to support local self-government reform in Ukraine

A Memorandum of cooperation to support a local self-government reform in Ukraine was signed in Warsaw by the Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Hennadii Zubko and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland Grzegorz Schetyna on December 17. The document was inked within the framework of a state visit of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to the Republic of Poland.

According to Hennadii Zubko, owing to the understandings reached during the previous meeting in March of this year, Ukraine has received from the Republic of Poland a support to prepare and implement the local government reform in Ukraine, develop legislation taking into account Polish experience in the area of reforming local self-government, to ensure further development of cooperation between the regions of the two countries and the states in general.

"Ukraine is moving along the way of European integration and striving to carry out a policy harmonized with the European standards, first of all, the European Charter of Local Self-Government. We appreciate the provided opportunity to gain experience of municipal consolidation in Europe and, in particular, in Poland and to use the best European practices in this field in Ukraine", said Hennadii Zubko.

The Vice Prime Minister expressed confidence that through the cooperation with our Polish colleagues Ukraine won’t just enrich its experience in systemic transformation and building of effective legal and trusted by the people's institutions, including the local government, but will also put it into practice.

The signed document specifies that the cooperation called to support the local government reform in Ukraine will be held in the shape of advisory activities in the process of drafting the normative legal acts on local self-government reforming in Ukraine and carrying out certain training activities to ensure introduction of the local government reform, notably, training and study tours, which are to be financed from the state budget of the Republic of Poland, rendering support through NGOs.

To facilitate such cooperation, as the text of the document reads, within the Ministry of Regional Development of Ukraine there will be set up a consultative group on the local self-government reform in Ukraine, which will be comprised of, depending on the needs, the Polish and Ukrainian experts in constitutional law and local self-government. The Ukrainian party shall chair the Group.

The Memorandum came into effect upon its signing.