Participatory Budget Development in Ukraine

Participatory Budget (PB) is a tool for the authority and community to cooperate, democratic process of discussing and decision making on allocating the certain amount of the local budget by the residents to implement the projects.

The main PB stages are as follows:

- Preparation (issue of legal regulations on PB introduction and implementation);
- Awareness raising;
- Discussing the community development priorities; projects preparation and submission;
- Projects review by the local authorities, involving the project authors;
- Selection of the projects to be implemented (voting, consensus);
- Projects implementation;
- PB process monitoring, assessment and improvement.

In 2014 within the PAUCI Foundation Project "Performance Budgets" under the European Union and Central European Initiative support there were first presentations of Polish expertise in PB implementation done for the communities of Ukraine. In one year time, with the PAUCI Foundation support, within Polish-Canadian program of democracy support, the Ukrainian cities: Cherkassy, Chernihiv and Poltava firstly introduced the PB. In 2015 Lutsk commenced the implementation of their own PB model. With the PAUCI support in 2016 six more cities introduced the PB: Sumy, Zhytomyr, Pryluky, Romny, Berdychiv and Irpin. 550+ projects were submitted by the residents of those cities, 124 PB projects were implemented.

The First Forum of PB Practitioners "When the City is Governed by the Residents" summarized two years of PB implementation. It took place in Irpin in November 2016 and representatives of more than 20 Ukrainian and Polish cities attended it.

The special value for PB practice expansion all over Ukraine rests on the support that has been provided starting back from 2016 by USAID Project "Enhancement of Local Financial Initiative" (ELFI-ІІ) executed by the Institute of Budget and Social and Economic Research and by the Project "Citizens in Actions" of the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research.

Since 2017 the cities and amalgamated communities are supported in PB implementing by the Project "Public Budgets from A to Z: public awareness raising, encouraging and involving" implemented by East Europe Foundation and Foundation of Polish-Ukrainian Cooperation PAUCI under the support of European Union and Project Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance (PLEDDG).

Nowadays, the Participatory Budgeting is spreading rapidly all over Ukraine. Currently we have hundreds of communities vs. five cities back in 2015 passing all the stages: Regulation development, projects submission and discussion, analysis and selection, implementation and monitoring.

During the official part of the Forum opening ceremony, the guests from EU countries and Forum participants highlighted the aspects of international support for PB implementation in Ukraine. In particular, those, successful in PB implementing within their native areas, and the representatives of international organizations supporting such democratic changes in society made their speeches.

Within these two days the participants shared their experience and reviewed the best practices and expertise with the experienced moderators at 15 diverse sessions, which in the form of discussions and trainings covered the PB implementation lifecycle: starting from the regulation development and up to the final implementation of the idea. Such a variety of one-topic sessions, but on its different aspects, had never been seen by the activists, and the panel discussions fed the effecient dialogue allowing to summarize and analyze the session data.

Within these two days the participants shared their experience and reviewed the best practices and expertise of the experienced moderators at 15 diverse sessions, which in the form of discussions and trainings covered the PB implementation lifecycle: starting from the regulation development and up to the final implementation of the idea. Such a variety of one-topic sessions, however on its various aspects, had never been seen by the activists, so the panel discussions fed the effecient dialogue allowing to summarize and analyze the session data.

When summarizing the Forum outcomes the participants shared their opinions and expectations about the changes to be implemented within their areas. The points of view were absolutely different, however, aimed for the same – to make Participation Budgeting really public and efficient one in order to encourage the community to change and to bring these changes on its own, implementing its own ideas.