Consistent European Union’s course on support of the decentralization reform in Ukraine was confirmed during a meeting in Brussels on Feb.27, between Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Communal Services of Ukraine Hennadii Zubko and EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn.

The Deputy Prime Minister briefed the EU Commissioner on the results and progress made over the five years of the reform implementation. In turn, Johannes Hahn noted the significant success of the decentralization reform in Ukraine as well as high pace of its implementation.

Hennadii Zubko praised the European Commission’s decision to extend U-LEAD with Europe as decentralization support programme which demonstrates high assessmentof the reform by the European Union. He informed that at presenet the agreement on the second phase of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme, in the framework of which the EU support will amount to €50 million, is being prepared.

"I am grateful to the European partners for the systematic support of decentralization. The second phase of the U-LEAD with Europe Programme should be maximum active, flexible and efficient, since within the new phase the reform, on the one hand, will have many challenges and tasks, and on the other hand, limited time for implementation. The task is to create all legal conditions for holding local elections in 2020 on a new administrative-territorial basis. The second phase of the Programme will mainly focus on regional policy, in particular,  the introduction of a modern system for monitoring and evaluation of regional development, support of the regional development agencies’ network; improvement of citizens’ access to administrative services; training of leadership of communities and support of innovative infrastructure projects in consolidated communities informed", Hennadii Zubko underscored.

Moreover, the parties touched upon  further support for energy efficiency reform and the work of the Energy Efficiency Fund as a second sphere of cooperation between Ukraine and the European Union.