Ukraine committed itself to continuing the decentralisation reforms and improving national legislation in line with the European standards. The Council of Europe is supporting the reforms through the special High-Level Dialogue on “Good Democratic Governance in Ukraine: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Forward in Post-War Period”.
As the next step, the Council of Europe is facilitating the high-level discussion to reach consensus on the reform of the State sub-national representation and on the conceptual vision of the transitional period, namely returning to the normal (civilian) legal regime of multi-level governance after the termination of martial law.
To this end, a “Strasbourg format” discussion was organised Lviv on 14 October 2023. The meeting brought together thirty senior Ukrainian officials including the First Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Oleksandr KORNIENKO and eight other MPs from different political parties, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr KUBRAKOV, as well as the leaders of National Local Government Associations and heads of several military administrations. Secretary General of the Congress of the Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe Mathieu MORI also joined the event and contributed to the dialogue. Daniel POPESCU, Head of the Department of Democracy and Governance of the Council of Europe moderated the meeting.
The “Strasbourg format” meetings are confidential discussions that follow a special CEGG methodology designed to reach an agreement on sensitive issues. It was previously used in April 2018 in Strasbourg, at the Council of Europe HQ, to reach consensus on the legislation on legality supervision of local authorities’ acts in Ukraine, and it resulted in agreement on 11 out of 12 issues. The meeting in Lviv was built around five themes, split into 32 specific questions. As a result, participants reached an agreement on the vast majority of the questions, and on the actions to be taken by the Ukrainian stakeholders.
The event is organised through the programme “Strengthening Good Democratic Governance and Resilience in Ukraine”, implemented by the Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise for Good governance - CEGG – which is the leading international partner on policy-making in the area of multi-governance reforms in Ukraine.
