Regional development in Ukraine: priority actions in terms of decentralization

This report explores the processes of decentralization and reform of local government currently underway in Ukraine. After a brief introduction in Part 1 laying out the objectives of the study and the scope of the work Part 2 presents an overview of the state of play of recent reforms highlighting key dimensions of the reform as well as the wider political-institutional context which is shaping the process of reform implementation. In Part 3 emerging trends with a more detailed exploration of the ongoing reforms and of current priorities and bottlenecks are explored. Key issues that are highlighted are issues that emerged in the process of amalgamating municipalities and continuing lack of clarity in terms of the distribution of power between different layers of government, the risk of recentralization at the rayon level impeding the process of decentralization concerning the newly amalgamated municipalities and continuing low levels of citizen trust and perception of efficacy. Part IV contains a series of short case studies illustrating key success factors which need to be considered in future cooperation projects. It is evident that given their shared transition legacies examples of good practice from Central European countries are seen to be most relevant to local and regional government actors in Ukraine. The final part of the report presents a series of recommendations for local and regional authorities, the national level and the Committee of the Regions to consider to further the decentralization and democratization of local government in Ukraine. These include recommendations to enhance transparency, to ensure greater clarity in intergovernmental relations as a means to safeguard local authorities against excessive centralization, and to foster cooperation with other Ukrainian municipalities and with external partners