The Centre of Expertise for Good Governance will support strengthening of metropolitan governance in the Lviv sub-region in the framework of the Programme “Enhancing decentralisation and public administration reform in Ukraine”.
Such an agreement was reached during an online meeting held on 9 June between Daniel Popescu, Head of the Department of Democracy and Governance of the Council of Europe, and Andriy Sadovyi, Mayor of the City of Lviv.
During the meeting, the partners discussed the areas and modalities of co-operation to assess the preconditions for establishing the Lviv Agglomeration. The meeting participants agreed on the significance of building trust and collaboration at local level.
The Centre of Expertise for Good Governance has been supporting Ukraine in the development of metropolitan governance for more than two years, in particular focusing on the Kyiv metropolitan area. Speaking about the existing practices and lessons learnt in other member States, Mr Popescu underlined that different European countries have adopted different models of metropolitan governance, and it will be up to the Ukrainian authorities to choose the ones that better suit their needs. The Centre of Expertise will remain an active contributor to the process, providing international expertise and best practice.
Currently, the Council of Europe through its Programme contributes to the Working Group under the Parliamentary Committee on Local Government, which is responsible for drafting the new version of the law on agglomerations. Its inputs are based on the legal expertise provided for the two previous versions of the draft law (CoE Opinion_CEGGLEX(2020)3 and CoE Analysis_ CELGR_LEX (2017)3).
Over the past two years, the Council of Europe Programme in Ukraine has carried out a number of activities, studies and surveys focusing on metropolitan governance, in particular:
- International Peer Review with the participation of senior experts and officials from the metropolitan areas of Hamburg, Warsaw, Turin and London - held in co-operation with the European Committee on Democracy and Governance (CDDG); the main result was the Peer Review Report “Democratic governance in metropolitan areas, focusing on Kyiv Region”, which describes why this issue is of national scope and its full resolution is beyond the powers of local government;
- Training on leadership development and cooperation for mayors and senior officials of communities from Kyiv metropolitan area;
- A number of thematic public consultations and questionnaires conducted within communities, dedicated to specific joint infrastructure projects;
- Legal opinion on the draft law on agglomerations;
- Sociological survey among residents of “Kyiv Agglomeration” – the Kyiv sub-region and Kyiv City – on attitudes towards metropolitan governance.
