The Government of Ukraine has planned to allocate UAH 1 billion as direct financial support for the united territorial communities: "Thus, those who have made a voluntary decision to unite and create a more capable and strong local communities will receive assistance from the budget", said the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk at a Government meeting on Wednesday, March 16.

"These funds should be directed to ensure the voluntary association of territorial communities could become capable, having more powers and, what is more important, to facilitate the people who live in such united communities could get better services: better education, medicine, infrastructure", stressed the Head of Government.

The Prime Minister noted that the adoption of the framework on voluntary associations of communities had resulted into creation 159 territorial communities.

"The Government has clearly declared that voluntary association will be encouraged exceptionally through economic but not administrative tools," he reminded.

At the same time, Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that the first stage of integration of territorial communities had winded up and suspended now at the level of 10% of the target.

The Prime Minister called on Vice Prime Minister/Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities of Ukraine Hennadii Zubko to find a way to continue the process of voluntary association of communities: "The main thing is we should listen to the people: why the process has stopped."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk noted that there were proposals regarding the administrative unification of territorial communities: "I consider that we have already had rather poor experience of 2005, therefore, we won’t follow this way. But now we should restart the mechanism of voluntary unification of territorial communities to enable people to determine themselves where they have an administrative centre, what network of schools and hospitals they have and to afford them manage themselves their territory, including financial resource that we allocate and they accumulate."

"We should find a solution jointly to prolong this process, as it is part of decentralization - we devolve the resource, but we devolve powers as well. And it is crucial to ensure that those who have decided to have a united territorial community could get money and assume responsibility to the people who decided to unite".