The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has joined the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and has become a participant in the Open Government Partnership. The action plan for implementation of the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness reflects Ukraine's joining the global movement aimed at the enhancement of openness of representative bodies all over the world.
On Friday, Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada Volodymyr Groysman launched Ukraine's joining the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness and triggered the implementation of this program. "The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine needs changes, however, it would be impossible to build new, high-quality decision-making process using only old tools," he said.
"Our goal is to build a quality, modern, European Parliament aimed at making high-quality decisions," Groysman noted.
The Action Plan for implementation of the Declaration has been elaborated by Ukrainian parliamentary activity monitoring organizations (OPORA, CHESNO, Transparency International Ukraine, Political Studios and Analytics Center, Media Law Institute), along with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and with the assistance of the UNDP Ukraine. The Plan envisions 20 mutual obligations of the Parliament and the civil society in the following fields: 1) availability of information, 2) involvement of citizens in parliamentary processes; 3) accountability; and 4) technologies and innovations.
Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Free Speech and Information Policy Viktoriya Siumar noted that "openness of the Parliament is not only an opportunity to enter it freely, but also a social lift, an opportunity to adjust relations between the civil society and the Parliament, improvement of their relations."
People's deputy of Ukraine Svitlana Zalishchuk noted: "We want to make the Ukrainian Parliament the most open and transparent body of power. We have already made deputies' declarations and information about their assistants open; we have opened the access to the parliamentary committees for journalists. Joining the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness is creating conditions for the incumbent deputies to guarantee further inevitable changes at the Verkhovna Rada. I want our Parliament to become the most open and the most democratic in the world," she said.
The participants in the presentation were people's deputies of Ukraine, representatives of the diplomatic corps, Head of the European Union Delegation in Ukraine Jan Tombinski, public men and journalists.