In bad need of Magdeburg Rights

Magdeburg Rights (Law) once allowed Ukrainian cities to become self-sufficient and deve­lop­ed. From the 13th-14th centuries onwards, this made it possible, so to speak, to build Europe at home. In the 17th-19th centuries, the empires that owned our lands abolished this law. And now, several centuries on, Ukraine’s modern-day cities are again facing the problem of how to win more rights for themselves.

In the 21 years of independence, there have been many proposals from politicians and experts and even attempts to put something into practice, such as the late-1990s administrative reform and the mid-2000s administrative-territorial reform, but, as a matter of fact, the situation still remains unchanged. If you take, for example, the financial aspect, the regions first remit most of their hard-earned funds to the center and then wait for the latter to share some money with them.

Ukraine has seen a widely-publicized conflict lately between the local autho­rities and Kyiv officials. The regions have made a series of statements, or even accusations, that the center under­pays them money. For example, the Lviv authorities announced recently that the treasury failed to pay 19,465,000 hryvnias into the City Council’s accounts, and the council is short of 44 million hryvnias to pay salaries to educationists. The Zhytomyr City Council also complained about the shortage of almost 50 million hryvnias as salary to teachers and doctors. Kyiv, too, was full of this kind of talk.

This caused Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to resent: he says local administrators bear “personal responsibility for the vital activities in cities,” and if they “are unable to carry out their duties,” they should “turn to the central government for money in a human way.” Incidentally, Dnipropetrovsk’s Mayor Ivan Kulichenko said after this that the 2013 state budget called for seizing 150 million hryvnias from the Dnipropetrovsk budget.

Meanwhile, the Presidential Administration is bracing itself for “the most important reformatory project of modern-day independent Ukraine.” As our readers have already guessed, it is the reform of local self-government. In his recent Dzerkalo tyzhnia article, Maryna Stavniichuk, advisor to the president of Ukraine and secretary of the Constitutional Assembly, spelled out the concept of this reform. Let us note without going into detail that, according to Ms. Stavniichuk, the reform of local self-government is supposed to return full-fledged self-government at the level of raions and oblasts and reduce the number of subsidized regions.

Incidentally, Ms. Stavniichuk says, among other things: “The past two years have seen the adoption of about two dozen laws that essentially limit the powers of local government bodies and run counter to the central government’s course towards decentralization of administration. There are still more draft laws which are being actively lobbied by some officials and MPs.” A bold and right statement. But this still raises a question: is it not the pro-governmental majority that was making all these decisions?

“We should first of all take into account two problems as far as local government reform is concerned,” Ihor Koliushko, chair of the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, says in a comment to The Day. “The first problem is decentralization. We have in fact already seen that we do not and will not have in the near future the possibility of having a government which could effectively rule such a big country. The larger the country is, the more difficult it is to pursue a centralized policy in it. Therefore, the problem of decentralization is the main question of not only the quality of life, but also the survival of the country and its citizens.”

“The second problem is as follows,” the jurist continues. “If a lot of powers are to be relegated to lower-level public administrations, will the current local government bodies – municipal and regional councils, state administrations – be able to receive and carry them out effectively? No, they won’t. So, as a matter of fact, the reform must lay a territorial groundwork for the local government bodies which will be authorized to tackle most of the problems of the individuals on this territory and have all the necessary resources, such as income control, etc.”

Mr. Koliushko emphasizes that the government is not prepared for such radical actions. “The conclusion is that just giving more money to local government bodies will not improve anything,” the expert points out. “It is wrong to just hand over some powers unless they are secured with money. There should be a comprehensive reform. This is why it has been raised to the constitutional level now, but, unfortunately, the proposals put forward by Maryna Stavniichuk do not show the government’s readiness for a radical reform. And half-measures can even do more harm than good.”