Myroslav Kosheliuk, Consultant of the Council of Europe

 

Lviv hosted the III International Forum of Agglomerations in Ukraine for two days last week. The Decentralisation Portal provided fairly detailed coverage of the event. In this article, we will share some insights into the outcomes of the event. After all, participants and speakers included representatives of the relevant ministry and the Ukrainian Parliament, as well as representatives of major Ukrainian agglomeration initiatives and metropolitan areas from around the world. Experts on inter-municipal cooperation across different sectors were also present. Discussions with such stakeholders therefore provide an opportunity to assess the progress made in this area in Ukraine, the challenges encountered, and the next steps to be taken.

 

 

Indeed, the first opening panel, organised with the support of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, began with a review of the past year since the previous forum. This annual review has become a tradition of the forum.

When discussing achievements in the regulatory framework for metropolitan governance in Ukraine, the amendments to the Ukrainian law “On Cooperation between Territorial Communities” were mentioned as key developments during the 2024–2025 period. These amendments defined the formation of agglomerations as a new, sixth form of inter-municipal cooperation. It was envisaged that their operation would be regulated by a separate law, which has yet to be adopted.

Instead, the key achievement of the current period was the adoption on 19 November 2025 by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of Resolution No. 1493 “On the Determination of the List of Functional Types of Territories and Requirements for Indicators for Classifying Territories into Different Functional Types”, in which agglomerations are singled out as so-called growth poles and criteria are set out for classifying communities as part of agglomeration territories. Agglomerations have also been mentioned in other recent regulatory documents.

Considering these steps, it is worth noting that progress may not be as rapid as desired, but the concept of agglomerations is gradually becoming established in the Ukrainian regulatory framework. How to regulate their functioning was one of the recurring themes of the forum.  However, most forum participants agreed that the absence of a law on agglomerations is not currently a critical obstacle to the spread of agglomeration initiatives.

This is evident from the fact that there are already at least eight such initiatives in Ukraine, although they are at different stages of institutionalisation:

• the communities of two agglomerations – Kyiv and Lviv – have chosen to establish local associations of local governments (in 2019 and 2024 respectively) and are already developing and implementing joint project initiatives, some of which were mentioned at the forum;
• the communities of two other agglomerations – Ivano-Frankivsk and Kryvyi Rih – signed memoranda of understanding this year and are now also working to define mechanisms for inter-municipal coordination and to develop portfolios of priority projects;
• the prospects for the formation of the Odesa agglomeration are reflected in the recently adopted development strategy for Odesa community, and just a week before the forum, a discussion on the strategy for forming “Greater Odesa” was held at the Odesa City Council, chaired by Serhii Lysak, Head of the City Military Administration;
• agglomeration projects have also recently been announced for the inclusion in Vinnytsia community strategy, which is currently being updated;
• finally, at least two other regions – Rivne and Khmelnytskyi – have expressed potential interest in forming agglomerations in these regions.

To this, we could add references to the prospects for forming such agglomerations in Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regional strategies, which were updated last year; however, for obvious reasons, these processes are not yet actively underway there.

The spread of bottom-up initiatives is arguably the most visible indicator of progress, the importance of which was emphasised at the forum. After all, they provide compelling evidence of growing community interest in agglomeration-based cooperation. This could, in turn, incentivise relevant decisions to be made at the national level. In his opening remarks, Vitalii Bezgin, the newly appointed Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, emphasised that his Ministry intends to become a strong partner for local self-government and respond to its requests. He announced plans to soon regulate communities’ ability to agree on public transport routes connecting them through inter-municipal cooperation rather than a regional tender to select transport operators for such routes, as set out in the current version of the Law of Ukraine “On Transport”. This is an example of a response to a request from the communities to remove obstacles to agglomeration cooperation.

It is also important that, by implementing agglomeration initiatives, communities gain experience in cooperation and have the opportunity to identify the optimal mechanisms for such cooperation and its limitations across different sectors. At the same time, the relevant Ministry and Parliament are prepared to seek ways of enshrining such mechanisms and removing existing barriers, both through government decisions, where possible, and through legislative initiatives – this position was confirmed by Stepan Kuibida, Advisor to the Minister for Communities, Territories and Internally Displaced Persons, as well as Olena Shuliak, Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on the Organisation of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, and Dmytro Mykysha, Member of that Committee, who also took part in the forum’s discussions. Indeed, such practical developments could form the basis of a relevant law, which could enshrine precisely the model best suited to the Ukrainian context.

 

 

Cecilia Dalman Eek, Vice-President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe and President of the Chamber of Regions, emphasised the need for Ukraine to define its own model of metropolitan governance, ‘Across Europe, different approaches to metropolitan governance are applied, taking into account the political and institutional realities of different countries, so it is up to Ukraine itself to determine which model best suits its specific needs.’ In her view, the development of agglomerations in Ukraine is also very important in the context of actively and effectively involving communities in the processes of future recovery.

Speakers at the forum discussed the development of agglomeration initiatives in the context of yet another challenge – European integration and the adaptation of Ukrainian regional policy to the standards and approaches of the EU cohesion policy. At present, Ukraine is constrained by its own resources, which could be channelled, in particular, to support such initiatives; however, in this context, the instruments used to support them in EU Member States were also mentioned. More specifically, the discussion centred on the practice of supporting so-called functional urban areas – one example of which is agglomerations – through an instrument such as integrated territorial investments. Municipalities in such areas define a common strategy and projects of mutual interest, and receive support for these from the Structural Funds. At present, this mechanism applies only to EU member states. However, according to MP Dmytro Mykysha, when we demonstrate to our European partners that the number of agglomeration initiatives is growing, this enables us to raise the issue of support from their side as well during negotiations with them.

The forum also focused on cooperation in functional areas that are not necessarily centred around a major city – such as metropolitan areas and agglomerations. This concept has a much broader scope. The key point is that neighbouring communities should share a common interest in tackling those problems where their joint efforts can yield better results. It is also worth mentioning the very diverse examples of such cooperation between communities discussed at the forum – Iryna Yashchyk, an environmentalist at the municipal enterprise Ecoservice-2022, spoke about joint approaches to tackling the issue of waste management of the Pyriatyn City Council; Leonid Oliinyk, Head of the Department of Architecture, Urban Planning and Agricultural Relations at the Berestechko City Council, spoke about how efforts are united to revitalise the River Styr, which flows through several communities; while Oksana Suprun, Head of the Savyntsi Settlement Military Administration in Izium district of Kharkiv region, provided inspiring examples of how mutual support helps communities to be more resilient, even when they are located close to the front line.

No matter how different these examples may be, they all share one very clear focus – a people-centred approach. This term was mentioned repeatedly at the forum during discussions of specific examples of inter-municipal cooperation – namely, that such cooperation is in the interests of community residents, wherever they may live – in larger or smaller communities.

Indeed, the focus on cooperation was, as announced, the main theme of the forum, and the participants’ presentations confirmed its central theme – cooperation between communities makes them stronger. Here, another observation is worth noting – during the panel discussions dedicated to different issues of sectoral inter-municipal cooperation, this year’s presentations featured not only examples from metropolitan areas in other countries but also examples of projects already being implemented in Ukraine, which were entirely comparable to the best practices of our international colleagues. Of course, we still have much to learn from them, but they, too, are already learning from our experience – above all, our ability to demonstrate incredible resilience in the face of the challenges posed by russia’s brutal aggression. Here, the words of Magnus Liljeström, Senior Advisor at Salar International and Senior Expert at Cities4Cities, are worth quoting, ‘Resilience is not just about endurance; it is about the ability to adapt to new circumstances’. The Ukrainian communities have demonstrated precisely this ability; thanks to decentralisation, they have become stronger, and with them, our country has also become stronger and more resilient – a point that was repeatedly emphasised at the forum. This resilience is, in part, the result of the horizontal links being forged between communities. Therefore, the development of inter-municipal cooperation, including in agglomeration formats, is a pressing priority – and this is undoubtedly the main conclusion from the forum.

In summary, let us once again highlight a few key points. The forum demonstrated that the concept of agglomeration-based cooperation is no longer viewed as something exotic in Ukraine, and there is a growing number of initiatives aimed to establish such cooperation.  A second important observation is that these initiatives are largely built around specific projects to solve common problems of communities across a wide range of sectors, and an increasing number of communities are beginning to consider the benefits of such a pooling of resources. Thirdly, progress in regulating the functioning of agglomerations may still be very modest. However, this is not currently hindering the spread of agglomeration initiatives. Their implementation is a precondition for the practical development of specific models of cooperation and the identification of the barriers that need to be removed. In this regard, it is important to note that representatives of central government bodies at the forum assured that they are prepared to act as partners to communities that are initiating agglomeration cooperation, so that these developments can be taken into account.

Perhaps this “meeting halfway” approach, given the circumstances in which the country finds itself today, is the most realistic way of eventually moving towards the model of metropolitan governance that is most suitable for Ukraine – by strengthening the resilience of communities that are joining forces today, and enhancing their capacity to effectively address post-war reconstruction issues and implement joint projects within the framework of future European integration.  If this approach proves successful, we can hope that, within a year, by the time of the next forum, we will see new results in the successful implementation of agglomeration initiatives in Ukraine.

 

The III International Forum of Agglomerations in Ukraine was organised by the Association “Lviv Agglomeration” and Lviv City Council, in cooperation with and with the support of the project “Strengthening multilevel governance and local democracy to support Ukraine’s recovery”, implemented by the Centre of Expertise for Multilevel Governance at the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe as part of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine “Resilience, Recovery and Reconstruction” 2023–2026 and the RELEVE project (Expertise France), which forms part of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme.