Ukrainian municipal reform: constitutional basis

Abstract

The purpose of the article is a teleological and formal analysis of the related to municipal reform constitutional-conceptual documents approved by public authorities. This topic is relevant to the contemporary urgent constitutional problems, because at the beginning of 2020 President of Ukraine announced his plans to initiate changes to the Constitution 1996 about the local government. The main methods of the research include classical legal science methods. The author uses formal analysis, synthase, inductive and deductive approach to the problems, covered by the article. While looking at the text of Ukrainian Basic Law 1996 and other documents, the author uses the most common methods of legal interpretation (original intention method, purposivism and other). Results. The author analyzes the constitutional basis of the ongoing Ukrainian municipal reform, that was launched in 1998. Since that time, the Head of the Ukrainian state (President), the Parliament of Ukraine (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine) and the Government of Ukraine (Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine) participated in the regulation of this reform. Their actions can’t be characterized as concerted, that is why the biggest part of the documents aim the same results (efficient local self-government according to the European municipal standard and best foreign practices). But the ways of reaching this result differs a lot – it might be revision of the administrative-territorial division, it might be decentralization of the public power, it might be deconcentrating of the local self-government bodies’ competence. Conclusion. The author recommends, firstly, to revise the concepts of the local self-government reform in Ukraine – as some of the documents, that are really out-of-the-date, should be cancelled. Secondly, all of the existed documents should be analyzed, and in case if there is some interesting and perspective proposal – it can be included to the last version of the Municipal Reform Concept. Thirdly, like the last Concept, they should include not only actions, but actions accompanied by the timeline. Key words: local government reform, local self-government, municipal government, municipal government, public authority.