Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European neighbourhood policy and enlargement negotiations, and Hennadii Zubko, Vice Prime Minister – Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine, discussed the results of the decentralisation reform in Ukraine during the roundtable meeting.

Hennadii Zubko stressed that the success of the reforms, that are obvious today, is certainly the joint success of Ukraine and Europe. And the decentralisation reform is one of the most successful.

"We have been implementing the decentralisation reform called the “National Project” for already three years. This does not concern only formation of new hromadas, this is, first of all, introduction of new services, change of management on the ground and sectoral decentralisation. There are more than 700 new leaders, new executives, managers of the local level in Ukraine, who have taken responsibility for the development of their hromadas, implementation of the projects and new quality in education, healthcare, administrative and social services," said Hennadii Zubko

In turn, EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn emphasised the success of the decentralisation reform in the country and noted that over the past two years Ukraine has made a significant breakthrough in the implementation of the reform. “The European Union fully supports Ukraine in the reforms’ implementation and is ready to proceed with provision of political support," stressed Johannes Hahn.

The Vice Prime Minister emphasised that the National Decentralisation Project is being implemented with the support of all European countries. "Today in Ukraine we can implement the best experience of the European countries in every direction. Experience of management and provision of administrative services from Germany and Sweden, establishment of the prefects’ institute from France, e-governance system from Estonia, regional development from Austria. And all these countries provide us with strong support for the reforms’ implementation. Ukraine is definitely a successful experience of appliance of the best European practices in the reform implementation," noted Hennadii Zubko.

Before the roundtable meeting, Hennadii Zubko and Johannes Hahn visited the mobile ASC, had a tour around the House of Decentralisation, and got acquainted with information platform "Trembita", developed by the EGOV4Ukraine project.