MinRegion of Ukraine keeps the tradition of organising the National local government best practices Contest. On 16 October 2020, the winners of the 9th National contest, based on the Council of Europe methodology, were announced.

Local, district and regional authorities were awarded for 39 beacon initiatives in the areas of:

1. Local authorities and community: information, dialogue and participation;

2. Improvement of the quality of educational services;

3. Creating safe, comfortable and attractive habitat.

In 2020, regardless of all the challenges in the recent year, the Contest was successfully implemented and 168 applications had been submitted from all the Ukrainian regions. Among them 163 applications met the eligibility criteria. Noteworthy that more than a half of all the applications refer to the projects implemented by amalgamated communities (widely known as a component of the “decentralisation reform”) – new entities established as a result of the voluntary merge of basic tier local authorities. This proves that “One of the biggest advantages of decentralisation is that local authorities have a greater capacity than central government to experiment, to innovate, to find new and efficient solutions for both new and old problems. The Best Practice Contest is about identifying good practices, celebrating and transforming them into a training vehicle from which every other municipality or local authority can learn for the benefit of residents”, as admitted Daniel Popescu, Head of Democratic Governance Department.

The award ceremony was organised by the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development in the framework of the Council of Europe Programme “Enhancing decentralisation and public administration reform in Ukraine”.