The Parliament should as soon as possible adopt amendments to the Constitution, which will allow full transfer of powers to the ground, so that no politician could intervene in the life of amalgamated hromadas, change their budget programmes or slow down decentralisation, enphasised Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, at the Forum of Local Self-Government and the 3^rd Forum of AHs.

“The coming years are key ones for Ukraine, which today becomes a state with a European model of governance. We are talking about decentralisation and changes that are taking place in each hromada. To make these changes irreversible, it is necessary to amend the Constitution, to adopt the Law of Ukraine No. 8051 “On the Principles of the Administrative and Territorial Structure”, to formulate perspective plans for hromadas’ amalgamation with full coverage of the Ukrainian territory with AHs, to take an administrative decision on hromadas’ amalgamation according to the perspective plans approved by the oblast councils. Local elections-2020 should take place on a new territorial basis,” said Hennadii Zubko.

In addition, the official stressed that an important component of the development of each hromada is the establishment of a dialogue between local self-government and business, in particular regarding tax payments. “It is extremely important – unshadowing and legalisation of salaries, allowing each hromada to receive additional revenues from this, and together with local budgets filling achieve an increase in revenues of up to UAH 291 billion in 2019,” Hennadii Zubko said.

Another direction of establishing cooperation between hromadas and business is the development of dual education. “It is from local self-government that the development of local specialties, from vocational education to colleges and universities, functioning in hromadas today, depends on. Investor comes first of all for people, who need to be professionally trained. And if we are talking today about labour migration, then not only salaries can stop this threat. Today, people can maintain high quality of services in various spheres of life – education, healthcare, infrastructure, administrative support,” Hennadii Zubko emphasised.