The Parliament is to improve the laws and regulations governing local democracy.

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered the Draft Law No. 7283 “On Amendments to the Law of Ukraine “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” and other laws and regulations of Ukraine on democracy at the local self-government level”.

The draft law proposes to stipulate that the detailed procedure for initiating, conducting and applying local democracy mechanisms is regulated by local self-government bodies in their municipality charters or individual resolutions of local councils. The draft law also lists the forms of public participation in decision-making by local self-governments and expands the forms of local democracy that are already used by local self-government bodies without being regulated by the Law. It also specified the issues to be regulated by the resolutions of local self-government bodies on the mechanisms of local democracy and by the municipality charters, as well as the issues to be regulated by the municipality charter.

Alina Zahoruiko, Deputy Chair of the Committee, Chair of the Subcommittee on Elections, Referendums and Other Forms of Direct Democracy, commented that this draft law is “on the future of municipalities”.

“We will consider and pass it after Ukraine’s victory in the war, which will symbolise the victory of democracy over autocracy. It will be the impetus for a further democratic transformation of the country. Regarding the content of this draft law, it is important to note that it is really aimed at developing various forms of participatory democracy at the local level. In Ukraine, there is a certain imbalance in the context of the availability of various appropriate tools in different municipalities. Some are actively adopting relevant regulations and implementing various tools to develop local democracy, while others are limited to those provided by the Law on Local Self-Government. In addition, each municipality has different approaches to the requirements for the use of appropriate tools. This is exactly what this draft law is designed to solve,” said Alina Zahoruiko.