Strengthening local self-government and decentralization reform have brought Ukraine closer to EU membership – Petro Poroshenko said this during a meeting in Lviv with community leaders and deputies of local councils from Eurosolidarity. The fifth President noted that decentralization not only became the most successful reform during his tenure, but also withstood the “crash test” of the covid pandemic and a full-scale Russian invasion. According to Poroshenko, curtailing the rights of local self-government threatens European integration. He is convinced that the military personal income tax should be returned to the communities and they should be given a resource for urgent preparation for a difficult winter.
“Decentralization is not chatter, not curtseys towards the territorial community, city mayors. Decentralization is money. The main result of our decentralization policy was that already in 2018, the funds of territorial communities exceeded the funds of the state budget. This is my dream, my goal, because the most of the money should remain in the community. And life confirmed the truthfulness of this joint strategy of ours,” Poroshenko recalled.
“At the beginning of the large-scale invasion, what became the outpost of the defense of Ukraine? Local communities. It was there that the detachments were formed, which made it possible to protect the country. The most of money from local budgets went to support the army,” the fifth President emphasized.
“If you took money from local self-government subjects, took away military personal income tax, where is this money? Previously, they went to brigades and bought brigades themselves. We are now advocating that personal income tax should be returned to communities,” says Poroshenko.
“The second position is the movement of the country to Europe. There is a special cooperation program that ensures the implementation of the most of the European aid through local self-government subjects. I emphasize: the tens of billions of dollars and euros allocated by our partners to provide assistance to Ukraine in the protection of critical energy infrastructure must go through local self-government subjects. The construction of protection should go through the subjects of local self-government. Why? Because the efficiency of using money increases significantly. And corruption is significantly reduced,” Poroshenko is convinced.