MinRegion urged the Council of Europe to resume its project activities in Ukraine and donor countries to continue funding them. The agenda of the Government of Ukraine includes important tasks that require expert support of the Council of Europe.

This was stated by Viacheslav Nehoda, Deputy Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine, at the 15th meeting of the European Committee for Democracy and Governance (CDDG).

“Today the Government, the MinRegion, and the Parliament of Ukraine are working to help local self-governments solve complex problems: how to finance social and other expenditures when the economy is not working as it did before the war; how to strengthen the institutional capacity of local self-government and enable more efficient decision-making; how to quickly assess material damage and begin recovery in the liberated areas; how to provide social support for millions of internally displaced persons; how to support the proper functioning of the municipalities that receive these IDPs and where the population has grown by a quarter or even a third in just a few days. There are many such challenges. We would be grateful if the Council of Europe, which helped us to develop decentralisation solutions, would provide us with expert support in these matters as well where possible. On this occasion, I urge the Council of Europe to resume its project activities in Ukraine and call on the representatives of donor countries to continue funding them,” said Viacheslav Nehoda.

Viacheslav Nehoda, Deputy Minister for Communities and Territories Development, also urged the participants of the 15th CDDG meeting to fully isolate Russia from the democratic world, noting that “it is not appropriate for democracies to sit at the same table with aggressors and criminals who have no respect for universal values and rule-based international order”. He also appealed to international partners for support in protecting the representatives of local self-governments from abduction, torture and persecution.