On 31 January 2018, the Government adopted a regulation that envisages the StateGeoCadastre to transfer state-owned land outside settlements to the communal ownership of amalgamated hromadas by the end of 2018, said Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman during the Cabinet of Ministers’ meeting.

“I promised that the land would be transferred to amalgamated hromadas and this promise will be kept. Starting from tomorrow no land cadastre centre of the country has the right to make decisions (on land within AHs - Ed.) at their own discretion. God forbid, someone tries to transfer the land outside the settlement (without the consent of the AH. - Ed.). Such actions will entail a clear criminal liability – throwing out of the room,” warned Volodymyr Groysman.

Maksym Martynyuk, First Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine, informed that 665 already established AHs will own about 760 thousand hectares of land.

According to him, the algorithm involves four stages:

1. AH applies to the regional department of the StateGeoCadastre,

2. Inventory of AH land that has not been previously transferred to use,

3. Registration of inventoried sites in the state cadastre,

4. Transfer of land to communal property of the hromada by order of the head of the regional department of the StateGeoCadastre.

A special website http://otg.land.gov.ua/ was created and a hotline for consultations 0800502528 was opened to support this process.

“Land inventory will start literally tomorrow and will continue until the end of the year. The first AHs will hopefully receive the land already in March. By the end of the year, we plan to complete this process.” said Maksym Martynyuk.

The regulation of the Cabinet of Ministers stipulates that the StateGeoCadastre will from now on refrain from disposing of land on the AH territory, except for the cases when the hromadas themselves make the relevant requests.