People's deputies of Ukraine - members of the Committee on State Building, Regional Policy and Local Self-Government Serhii Vlasenko, Vitalii Kurylo, Serhii Kudlayenko, Olena Boiko, Yurii Bublyk, Mykola Fedoruk, Oleksandr Dehtiarchuk, Aliona Shkrum, Andrii Reka, Oleh Bereziuk, Vasyl Huliaev and Liubomyr Zubach participated in the IV Forum of Local Self-Government, held in Lviv at the initiative of the Lviv City Council.
The event is a platform for exchanging experience and discussing important problems and prospects in the domain of local self-government, increasing the role of local authorities in ensuring development of the country. More than 150 representatives of local self-government bodies, international and Ukrainian experts in the field of urban development and municipal policy participate in the Forum.
During the panel discussion on the reform of local self-government in the context of constitutional reform in Ukraine, Committee Chairperson Serhii Vlasenko stressed that such wide discussions are crucial for the successful implementation of the government decentralization reform. S.Vlasenko said that "from the viewpoint of logic it was necessary to discuss the purpose of the reform, to determine its final results, make decisions what amendments the Constitution of Ukraine needs to achieve the determined goals, and then to draft laws and executive orders. Unfortunately, we have done the opposite, and the lack of constructive dialogue between the authorities and the society, which should have proceeded the amending of the Constitution of Ukraine, has led to the situation when the proposed constitutional model of the power decentralization has split the parliament and the society into two camps."
Also the head of the Committee said that "we have certain achievements in the decentralization of power – namely, amendments to the Budget Code of Ukraine concerning financial decentralization, and o course certain shortcomings. Thus, the Committee, having considered at its last meeting the progress of the implementation of the power decentralization reform and the course of its implementation as to the transfer to local self-government bodies of powers in the spheres of state registration, state architectural and construction control, the state land cadastre, was forced to admit inefficiency of steps made by the government of Ukraine for successful and timely transfer of executive powers to local self-government bodies."
The Chairperson of the Committee expressed confidence that any constitutional reforms should be held only after a broad public discussion, determination of goals of such reforms and ways of achieving them, as amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine should be an institute of a national consensus and harmony.