Statutes of the territorial communities of the city: Ukrainian experience and European municipal standards.

Abstract

The President of Ukraine emphasized that the next stage of the municipal reform in Ukraine, aimed at its final completion, will take a prominent place in his activities. After all, this reform has been going on since Ukraine's declaration of independence, and therefore needs to be completed as soon as possible. Accordingly, scientific developments in this area are urgent, which will help to find new ideas for completing the reform and to increase the effectiveness of law-making in the relevant field.

The long duration of municipal reform in Ukraine has led to close attention to its major stages by a significant number of scholars. However, the conclusions and suggestions of these authors on the analyzed issue lacked systematicity; they analyzed only some aspects of the problem. Therefore, it is advisable to continue research in this area.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the Ukrainian experience of lawmaking with respect to statutes of territorial communities in the context of European municipal standards.

The statute of a territorial community of a city is a by-law normative-legal act adopted by the city council in order to take into account the historical, national-cultural, socio-economic and other features of city self-government and to regulate the collective participation of members of the territorial community in its implementation. To call the statutes of territorial communities of cities "urban constitutions", as is often the case in literature, is hardly true. The constitution of Ukraine and the statutes of territorial communities of Ukrainian cities have such common features of a formal nature as legal technique and thesaurus, as well as the absence of a procedure for their elaboration and adoption by the normative acts. Most of the formal signs of the statutes of territorial communities of cities do not coincide with the formal features of the Basic Law, including obligatory availability, the need for state registration, the highest legal force and ability to act as a basis for further rulemaking, direct action, stability. It is hardly possible to respect the statute of the territorial community of the city by the "city constitution" in the light of current European municipal standards.