The Mayor of Chernihiv, Vladyslav Atroshenko, and the Burgomaster of the German city of Aachen, Sybille Keupen, signed a twinning agreement between the cities.

The cooperation that culminated in the signing of an official agreement was facilitated by the Union of Ukrainians in Aachen.

This is reported by the official website of the Chernihiv City Council.

The Parties plan to create specialised working groups that will look for points of contact between the Ukrainian and German cities on various issues and share their own experience in addressing them.

“We are experiencing great difficulties in terms of lack of funding. And I said that during our initial communication. Because many businesses were destroyed, and many people left the country. However, and I would like to stress this, receiving financial support is not my primary motivation when I consider the friendship between our cities. For the friendship between Chernihiv and Aachen, I see the German experience, city management technologies and approaches to many things that we can adopt,” said Vladyslav Atroshenko.

He focused on the areas of interest for Chernihiv for adopting experience. These include public transport (software products used to calculate the public transport traffic; types of transport used, their passenger capacity, number of units of equipment in operation, fuel they run on, etc.); waste processing; street cleaning (exact regulations; targeted programme, whether it is all streets; types of equipment and the number of units used, street cleaning costs in different seasons); thermal energy generation; water treatment (water purification method, how the required water quality indicators are achieved from a technological perspective); organisation of urban space (pedestrian, park, recreation areas; car parking, etc.).

“We feel proud that you allowed us to be useful in the recovery of your city. Especially after the war. My colleagues are very happy that we will soon have a working group formed and we will start working on the identified directions. Our main objective is the organisation of a standard of living for people that would meet all standards. I hope that we will find win-win points to work on as part of our cooperation,” said Sybille Keupen.

Aachen is one of the oldest German cities with a population of almost 250,000, located on the borders of three countries, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Among its main branches of industry are the confectionery industry, mechanical engineering, automation, laser and environmental technologies.

Chernihiv’s partner cities include Gabrovo (Bulgaria), Hradec Králové ( Czechia), Memmingen (Germany), Petah Tikva (Israel), Prilep (North Macedonia), Ogre (Latvia), Tarnobrzeg (Poland), Rzeszów (Poland), Lappeenranta (Finland), Aachen (Germany).

The agreement with Reims, France, is at its finalisation stage.