Between 12–16 May a group pf Ukrainian civil servants and local government activists paid a study visit to Poland as part of the project “V4 Civil Servants Mobility Program – Ukraine” financed by the International Visegrad Fund and implemented by the think-tank consortium Think Visegrad . The main subject of the one week long visit to Poland, organized jointly by OSW and the Institute of Central and Eastern Europe in Lublin, was the Polish experience connected with the reform of state administration, decentralization of tasks and public finance and the functioning of local government structures.
The Ukrainian delegation consisted of Svitlana Tsapliy, head of the human rights unit at the Department for Constitutional, Administrational and Social Legislation at the Ministry of Justice, Olena Hohol, head of the unit for socio-economic regional development at the Ministry of Finance; Iryna Provytska, head of the unit for economic development of local government at the Ministry for Regional Development, Oleksandr Slobozhan, expert for budgetary policy at the Association of Ukrainian Cities and Serhiy Sharshov, deputy director of the Department for Regional Development and Project Management at the Ukrainian Ministry for Regional Development.
The visit by the Ukrainian delegation began with a seminar at OSW, which was opened by dr Adam Eberhardt, deputy director of OSW and dr Zbigniew Krużyński, national coordinator of Visegrad cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The meeting was moderated by Wojciech Konończuk, head of the Department for Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova at OSW. The programme of the visit to Warsaw included a meeting with Marcin Święcicki, coordinator of the experts’ group appointed upon the initiative of the President of the Republic of Poland to support Ukraine in conducting its local government reform; Czesław Bielecki, architect and urban planner who headed the Team for the Reform of the State Administration in the years 1990-1995, Jerzy Stępień, former President of the Constitutional Tribunal and co-author of the first reform of the state administration in Poland after 1989; Prof. Irena Lipowicz, the Polish Ombudsman and specialist in the area of local government; Bartłomiej Ostrowski, director of the Department for Foreign Cooperation and International Projects at the Marshal’s Office of the Lower Silesian Voivodship in Wroclaw; Agata Dąmbska from the non-governmental organization Forum Od Nowa; Jerzy Darowski, expert of the NARDA foundation and Grzegorz Kabulski, lawyer from the Association of Polish Poviats.
In Lublin the Ukrainian delegation visited the Marshal’s Office of the Lubelskie Voivodship, where the visit participants met with Rafał Sobiech, vice-director of the Department for the European Social Fund; Bogdan Kawałko, director of the Regional Policy Department and Ryszard Staśczak, director of the Finance Department. In the Lublin City Hall talks were held with dr Mariusz Sagan, director of the Department for Strategy and Investor Relations, Mirosława Puton, director of the Department of Budget and Accounting. In the Office of the Lubelskie Voivodship the guests from Ukraine talked with Beata Niemczyk, director of the Department for Finance and Certification. The delegation also met with Ukraine’s Consul General in Lublin Ivan Hrytsak, academic staff of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin and visited the Special Economic Zone in Lublin.
We would like to thank every individual and every institution that supported us in implementing this project.
