Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration of Ukraine - Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development, addressed to attendees of the 10th European Summit of Regions and Cities, which took place on March 18-19 in Mons, Belgium.

Please find the full text of the speech below.

Dear Mr. President Cordeiro!

Dear Colleagues and Friends!

Thank you for the opportunity to address the participants of the 10th European Summit of Regions and Cities and to express sincere gratitude from the Ukrainian People for your assistance and support. For the past two years, Ukraine has faced the greatest challenges in its history: military aggression by Russia. However, Ukraine possesses a secret weapon that is only possible in a democratic state - strong civil society and effective local self-government.

Even during a full-scale war, we are continuing the decentralization reform. We have 3 key directions of our work:

I. Completion of the decentralization reform via:

-      introduction of administrative supervision over the legality of decisions of local self-government bodies;

-      ensuring the separation of own and delegated powers of local self-government bodies;

-      strengthening the financial capacity of local self-government along with increasing the transparency and accountability of their work.

Associations of Local self-governance, experts, government and members of the parliament, we agreed on the reform priorities in the Decentralization Reform Road Map, which will be shortly adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers.

II. Strengthening the role of communities in recovery and restoration:

-      in 2023 and 2024 we managed to allocate $1.7 billion for the local and regional restoration. Major parts of this fund — are arrested Russian assets, which were available in Ukraine, the other half – EIB loans.

-      Thanks to the Ukraine facility Ukrainian communities will get at least 20% of the grant money from the EU for the restoration, modernization and development of their infrastructure projects.

We are working closely with local self-governance associations to build transparent and just rules of the project's prioritization, based on the principles of the European Union Cohesion Policy.

However, given the amount of destruction and the growing need for reconstruction, it is important for us to jointly advance the issue of unblocking Russian assets and directing them to the defense and restoration of Ukraine.

III. Strengthening Regional Development:

-      We updated the State Strategy for Regional Development till 2027 to align priorities with the Ukraine plan, adapt the existing strategy to the realities of the war and start adapting Ukrainian regional policy to the instruments of the European Union. With the Ukraine Facility support Ukrainian regional policy has a chance for the proper reboot, based on the bottom-up, data driven approach.

We welcome the initiative of a Joint Consultative Committee between Ukraine and the European Committee of the Region as a consistent and stable form of cooperation with the local and regional authorities of member states. We do hope that such an instrument will provide for strengthening the capacity of local self-governments of Ukraine on our way to the European Union.

With the support of European partners, we are actively working to meet Ukraine's obligations under the Enlargement Report and European Integration in general. We are grateful to the citizens and institutions of the European Union for their comprehensive support.

In Ukraine, it is said that true friends are recognized in times of difficulty. President Cordeiro, today, through you, I want to once again thank all representatives of regional and local authorities of Europe and all those who care, who have been helping us fight for our shared democratic values over the past 755 days.