EU territorial units

During the discussion of Hungarian practice, participants learned about the existence of a system of territorial divisions in the EU called NUTS. Its purpose is to collect and work up EU statistics and to distribute the resources of EU structural funds.

According to EU classifications, NUTS2 level territorial units should have a population of 800,000 to 3,000,000. It is these nominal units who are the recipients of the bigger share of money from EU structural funds. One of the ideas that circulated at the consultations was that if Ukraine hoped to eventually become a member of the Union, it needed to consider the existence of this division in the process of its own territorial reforms.

Microregions—united we stand

It turns out that the problem of many scattered communities with small populations is fairly widespread in Eastern Europe. Hungary overcame this by instituting microregions, that is, unions of municipalities around common objectives.

Hungary’s central government uses financial incentives in the form of grants and subsidies to get communities to join forces in such microregions. Using economic reasons for joining rather than political force is the recipe Hungary offers Ukraine.

Changing administrative structures: Not a constitutional issue

Since Hungary did not have option of changing its Constitutionally established administrative structure, the country was able to modify this structure significantly to help regional development by adopting the necessary legislation.

Hungary’s Constitution establishes two administrative levels: the municipality and the district. Each of these levels elects a general assembly. However, according to the country’s 1996 law on regional development and state planning, two more administrative levels were introduced: microregions, which are government by microregional councils that are essentially an assembly of representatives of the municipalities that belong to that microregion, and seven regions that are equivalent to the EU NUTS2 level.

At this level, there are also regional development councils that are assemblies of local government bodies belonging to these regions and the Regional Development Agency. Although this system is somewhat hard to comprehend, it is quite effective. Hungarian practice shows that the necessary changes can be made to the country’s administrative organization even without resorting to Constitutional amendments.

Voter participation in policymaking: A common problem

On one hand, Hungary experiences the same problems with getting voters involved in the policymaking process as does Ukraine. For instance, public hearings (town hall meetings) must be held at the municipal level at least once a year, by law. And although each municipality faithfully does so, it is rare for local voters to show up for such meetings more than the minimum required number of times.

Still, the Hungarian specialist noted that there were other mechanisms that might be helpful in Ukraine’s situation. For instance, committees can be formed within local representative bodies consisting half of local elected deputies and half of interested local voters and businesses. Such committees can often be empowered to make policy decisions. Thus, the community is directly involved in local government and in developing the necessary policies. This kind of practice could prove very useful for Ukraine as well.

The “Public Consultations and Awareness Campaign for Reforming Local Government in Ukraine—Phase 2” project is being funded by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Its purpose is to increase the role of public consultations in the public policymaking process and to inform the community, including government representatives, more widely about various aspects of local government reform in an open manner that takes public opinion into account.

For more information, contact ICPS analyst Ivan Presniakov by phone at (38044) 4844400 or via email at ipresniakov@icps.kiev.ua.

Author: Ivan Presniakov

Source: Icps