Good democratic governance is the way in which democracy gains true substance in everyday life of people across communities in Europe. In the volatile context of the on-going aggression by the Russian Federation, Ukraine remains committed to observe the highest standards of public ethics and integrity at local level.
As a part of Ukraine’s State Anti-Corruption Programme for 2023-2025, the Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise for Good Governance – CEGG – carried out a survey of the current state of application of the rules of ethical behaviour by elected local officials and local councillors. The CEGG’s partners in this process were the National Agency on Corruption Prevention and two national associations of local government, namely the Association of Ukrainian Cities and the Association of Amalgamated Territorial Communities.
679 representatives of local communities, including 51 mayors and 137 executive chiefs, took part in the survey, representing nearly a third of their total number in Ukraine.
According to the findings, almost 87 % of surveyed local authorities have already introduced codes of ethics and/or general rules of ethical conduct. However, 80% of respondents noted the lack of their effective monitoring mechanism. The majority of respondents (69%) admitted the need to enhance liability for violations of ethical rules together with improvement of monitoring tools.
On 20 October 2023 in Kyiv (Ukraine) the CEGG presented the survey results and the next steps. Mr Oleksandr NOVIKOV, Head of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention and Mr Maciej JANCZAK, Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine participated in the event with more than 150 local authorities’ representatives following the discussion online.
The Council of Europe jointly with the National Agency on Corruption Prevention and other stakeholders shall discuss possible legal initiatives to improve overall framework for public ethics and integrity at local level, develop ethical infrastructure and practical guidelines in this field, such as methodological recommendations or model codes of ethics.
The survey was prepared within the Programme “Strengthening Good Democratic Governance and Resilience in Ukraine”, implemented by the CEGG using its Public Ethics Benchmarking toolkit for central and local authorities and the recent Recommendation CM/Rec(2023) 5 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on the principles of good democratic governance.
