In the Kyiv Oblast, representatives of cities and amalgamated hromadas, RSA specialists, oblast councils, MinRegion, CMU Reform Office, Local Self-Government Associations, the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine, and the Swedish-Ukrainian project “Support to Decentralisation in Ukraine” (SKL) will start joint work on accelerating the process of hromadas’ accession to cities of oblast significance and AHs.

Dmytro Lykov, acting director of the Department of Urban Development and Architecture of the Kyiv Oblast State Administration, noted that the situation in each city of the Kyiv Oblast is unique, so there cannot be a single algorithm for dealing with accession issue. In each case there are peculiar difficulties. Somewhere there are legal conflicts of administrative units’ subordination, somewhere there are problems with urban planning documentation and outdated plans of rayons and oblast, in other cases – the interests of local authorities and businesses. The Kyiv Oblast State Administration is working on the development of city-planning documentation for the Kyiv Oblast, and these developments are transparent and accessible on the Open spatial planning portal.

Hromada representatives agreed to set up their own working groups to formulate a strategic vision of future amalgamations in order to offer accession to neighbouring hromadas in a dialogue format.

They will be assisted be project specialists, supported by the OSCE Project Co-ordinator in Ukraine. The project envisages donor and expert coordination for advisory assistance to cities of oblast significance and AHs. The project involves experts from the Association of Ukrainian Cities, Local Government Development Centres, established with the support of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme and MinRegion, the Swedish-Ukrainian project “Support to Decentralisation in Ukraine”.

This work should result in new hromadas’ accessions to cities of oblast significance and AHs.

The project is carriying out the same work in the Donetsk, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts in July-August 2019.