Why local authorities need to be involved in negotiations with EU

On 17 March, Ukraine officially received from the European Commission the benchmarks for the final clusters of accession negotiations with the EU.

According to the Committee of the Regions (an EU advisory body), more than 70% of EU legislation has a direct impact on local self-government.

Read more about the importance of local authorities’ participation in the European integration process in the column by Marta Suprun of the Cities4Cities initiative: European integration at the local level: how municipalities can protect their interests. 

According to the author, the EU legislative chapters that contain the most obligations for local self-government concern environmental protection, regional policy, rural development, transport, energy, fundamental rights, procurement and competition.

"In many areas, such as public procurement, provision of administrative services, consumer protection, internal financial control, municipalities will be forced to significantly develop the competencies of key specialists and create new procedures," Marta Suprun writes.

She notes that most communities, for example, do not have consumer protection departments.

The expert adds that due to the functioning of the single market and the requirement for free competition, the approach to service provision will change substantially.

"Communities will be forced to conduct public procurement for the provision of various social, transport or other services that are currently delivered by their municipal enterprises. Here, the critical issue is the introduction of non-price criteria for selecting winners in tender procedures," the author emphasises.

Suprun stresses that local self-government requires systematic preparation for European integration, as it significantly lacks both funding and personnel for such a massive task.

"Today, this function is usually performed by international projects rather than the state. For example, the Cities4Cities initiative, within the Polaris Programme, offers free training for communities on the impact of European integration on local self-government through its online academy," the expert explains.

She also believes that Ukrainian local self-government should strengthen its role in Ukraine’s European integration process.

For comparison, in Serbia, which has long been negotiating with the EU, representatives of local self-government are involved in discussions on 11 chapters.

"As in most candidate countries, in Ukraine the government still underestimates its role. Only under negotiating Chapter 22, which concerns regional development, do associations of local self-government partially participate in preparing Ukraine’s negotiating position," Marta Suprun states.

According to her, the ability to communicate directly with EU institutions is equally important.

"Especially in this communication, we need a single voice from local self-government. In the near future, the Council of the EU is expected to decide on the creation of a Joint Consultative Committee with Ukraine within the Committee of the Regions. This will be an official platform for dialogue between elected representatives from local and regional levels and members of the Committee of the Regions and other European institutions," she writes.

She adds that representatives to this committee will be delegated by the government, but it is important that the delegation is not a puppet one, and that it is inclusive, representing different associations as well as different types of communities and regions.