VINNYTSIA. Sept 16 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Vinnytsia has officially launched the U-LEAD with Europe program to support decentralization in Ukraine.
“The decentralization reform is crucial in order to re-establish and strengthen the link between the local communities and their representatives,” European Commissioner for Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn said, when launching the program.
“The ongoing of the decentralization reform in Ukraine already provides real benefits to local communities through increase in local budgets and has a great potential to bring even more,” he stated.
Hahn said the U-LEAD program would support Ukraine in establishing a more transparent multi-level governance system, which is accountable and responsive to the needs of all citizens of Ukraine.
At the launch event, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman thanked the European Union for its continued support to the decentralization process in Ukraine and stressed the government’s commitment to the implementation of this milestone reform.
The U-LEAD program provides for improvement of administrative services at the local level and strengthening the capacity of implementing the reform policy at the national, regional and local levels. At the local level it is planned to create and reconstruct up to 600 centers for providing administrative services, as well as conduct 1,800 trainings for their employees.
The program budget is EUR 102 million. Its implementation is planned for the period from 2016 to 2020.
