A common position of the authorities has provided an opportunity to carry out a decentralization reform in recent years, and to devolve more powers than during the entire independence period. This was stated by Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman at a meeting of the Regional Development Council with the participation of President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday.

He noted that in previous years "not a single step has been made to provide at least 10% of the opportunities for the communities, districts, areas in comparison to what they have today." "In fact, this unification has given us chances to shape the position of the Government and Parliament to support initiatives enabling introduction of the decentralization process", said Volodymyr Groysman.

The Prime Minister accentuated that the President had agreed, supported, and even headed devolving powers, adding that in the reform of decentralization "there are effective mechanisms that will allow us to achieve a breakthrough".

He stressed that many years of "double-talk and populist rhetoric" had driven the country into a precarious situation, so that it proved necessary to take a lot of difficult decisions that hadn’t been taken for the years of pursuing a non-professional policy.