INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DIMENSIONS OF COOPERATION OF TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The author has analyzed the political and legal conditions of realization of cooperation between communities: inner (between territorial communities) as well as international (between regions and cities abroad). It was established that the effect of the Law of Ukraine «On Cooperation of Territorial Communities» is measured by almost 900 agreements on such cooperation. Subject analysis of these documents allowed to single out the directions of cooperation of communities – service, communal, infrastructural and energy effective ones. The obstacles which hinder such cooperation are conditioned by the insufficient competency level of local governmental officials, significant disproportion of the budgets of territorial communities, problems of correlation of the influence of local public authorities and local self-government bodies at the level of district and region, insufficient level of development of local initiatives and so on. It is stated that the way out of the controversial situations should be improvement of legislation, objective court decisions, timely qualified mediation of conflicts, contractual solution of problems. It is appealed to the legally regulated authority of local self-government bodies to conduct international activities. It is indicated that such opportunities are regulated by separate agreements between Ukraine and other countries which began to be concluded in the early 1990-ies. It is mainly about cross-border collaboration and cooperation between twin cities. In the context of European integration of Ukraine the angle of attention of the regions is focused on the issues of attracting foreign investments, donor assistance, grants from EU institutions and joint projects with foreign partners. It is proved that the factor of russian military aggression has led to the reorientation of the direction of international cooperation of communities from cultural, educational, informational and environmental to humanitarian and infrastructural, which are completely subordinated to the needs of wartime.