We need to establish an effective dialogue between hromadas and oblast administrations to clarify perspective plans for the formation of hromadas’ territories, so that the plans reflect both the hromada’s vision of amalgamation and the criteria of the provision of the Methodology for the Formation of Hromada’s Territory, as well as the resource capacity of amalgamated hromadas.

This was emphasised by Alyona Babak, Minister of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, during discussions with MPs on problematic issues and defining ways of working together towards decentralisation.

According to her, the issue of creating additional methodological recommendations regarding the criteria for determining the capacity of hromadas emerged during the modeling of the optimal service delivery network. Specialists, based on the Government-approved Methodology for the Formation of Capable Hromadas, felt a lack of criteria to make a decision.

During the discussion, recommendations were presented on the assessment of the level of hromadas’ capacity, in particular population, taxpaying capacity index, share of local taxes and fees in the revenues of the general fund of the budget of territorial hromadas.

“We propose MPs a tool to lead dialogue with hromadas in their constituencies in order to understand other criteria we need to take into account, when our specialists go to work with hromadas and oblast state administrations on the ground, so that people can understand why they need to amalgamate,” said Alyona Babak.

MPs present at the meeting generally supported the need to define clear criteria of hromadas’ capacity.