Opening the hearings, Committee Chairman Oleksandr Omelchenko, stated that the hearings were held "in the context of a new Ukraine as the presidential republic." He stressed that despite the positive aspects of the applicable Constitution, an effective and democratic model of the local self-government failed to be developed in Ukraine.
The participants of the hearings were informed about the expert conclusion of the Council of Europe regarding compliance of the effective legislation of Ukraine with the European Charter of Self-Government. Pursuant to the conclusion, Ukraine should adopt a European concept of self-government as the right of the local authorities: to grant full-fledged authorization to the regional and district councils; to implement the principle of subsidiarity (possibility of adopting effective resolutions at the lowest authority level); to order the authority delegation system; to establish the budgetary system for the local authorities to act independently within their responsibility.
The attendants of the hearings underscored that having ratified the European Charter of Self-Government in 1997, Ukraine had not ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and the European Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at Local Level.
The participants of the hearings discussed the Recommendations 102 (2001) and the Resolution 123 (2001) of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe regarding the state of local and regional democracy in Ukraine, and the recommendation of the Council of Europe concerning the National Strategy of the Local Self-Government Reform in Ukraine.
The attendants passed the Guidelines of the Committee hearings including the appeal to the President of Ukraine with a request to initiate setting up an expert working group on the local self-government development and scrutinize the issue of implementation of the European Charter of Self-Government in Ukraine at the Council of Regions.
The Guidelines also include the appeal to the Council of Europe and other international (donor) organizations with a request to consider the possibility of increasing financial (technical) assistance to the Parliament, the Government and other public authority bodies of Ukraine to foster the local self-government reform and development of local and regional democracy.