INFLUENCE OF DECENTRALIZATION ON STATUTORY RULE-MAKING OF THE UNITED TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES

Abstract

Urgency of the research is caused by the emergence of new aspects of functioning of the basic level of local government which appear as a result of significant changes of the territorial basis, organizational, material and financial support of a territorial community. The process of creation of united territorial communities (OTG) resulted from the local government reform, and the adoption of the statutes of the OTGs actualizes the need of studying these documents to reflect changes related to decentralization of power, creating conditions for the exercise of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of OTG members in the implementation of local government. However, there is a lack of scientific publications on the issue.   

The paper objective is to study changes in territorial communities` consideration in OTG statutes in the context of new aspects of building relationships between residents of the OTG settlements.

The analysis of the statues of OTGs in Dnipropetrovsk region shows that in the territorial communities the terms “territorial community” and “community” are used along with the term “united territorial community” as synonyms, where OTG reflects, above all, changes in territorial boundaries of a community. At the same time, these changes cause the appearance of other considerations of a territorial community. On the one hand, it is about focusing on understanding a territorial community as a holistic reflection of the basic level of local government, and on the other hand, about separation of settlements of a territorial community which formed an OTG. 

In practice, difficulties occur not only in the understanding of the relations between “community”, “territorial community”, and “united territorial community”, but such concepts as “settlement” and “administrative and territorial unit”. The study shows that along the OTG creation, there has been a certain transformation in defining the local government system at the basic level. That is confirmed by the emergence in the OTG statutes of such an element as “internal communities”, which are considered as structural elements of a territorial community, whose members are the residents of the settlements rather than the administrative center of the community. Separation of the OTG administrative center and its settlements actualizes the issue of taking into account interests and needs of all residents of the OTG, all settlements of a united community, forming the understanding of the unity of a territorial community.   

The research found the threat of limiting the range of territorial community members to only Ukrainian citizens, which restricts the rights of other residents to local government, since under the national law members of a territorial community are citizens of Ukraine, foreigners, and stateless persons. The following division of the members of the territorial community is found in the OTG statutes: members of the territorial community and full members of the territorial community; full members of the territorial community and members with limited municipal and legal capacity; active members of the territorial community. That is related to identifying their capabilities to exercise their rights to direct participation in local issues. Thus, it is confirmed that the division of members of a community into two categories in terms of the presence or absence of active suffrage, on the one hand, allows specifying at the statutory level the disparate provisions in the laws of Ukraine “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine”, “On Local Elections”, and others. On the other hand, the study shows the existence of a problem related to regulation of the territorial community members` rights to participate in general meeting, public hearings, local initiatives, and local government bodies. One of the examples is the restriction of the right to participate in general meeting. The analysis of the provisions of the Law of Ukraine “On Local-Government in Ukraine” and the Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine “On Approval of the Regulation on General Meeting of Citizens at Residence in Ukraine” suggests that it is advisable to clarify the formulation of the concept “general meeting of citizens” as “general meeting of the community residents” or “general meeting of the community members”. The usage of the word “citizens” leads to limitation of the rights of other territorial community members to participate in general meeting. The main criterion here is legal residence in a respective territory. Such proposition is shared in the works of others scientists.   

The study confirms the exclusive importance of the OTG statute for consolidation of all members of the territorial community and the OTG legitimization. Particularly important in such statutes is the issue of specifying the settlement status, provisions as for building relationships between settlements within one OTG. It is also possible to assume a further diversification of organizational forms of relations between the OTG settlements in solving local issues. First of all, it concerns creation of various forms of consultative and advisory institutions at local government bodies, bodies of self-organization of population that provide representation of the residents` interests in OTG settlements.