An amalgamated territorial community, in short, is a basic unit of administrative division in Ukraine. It is an enlarged community consisting of other territorial communities, formerly known as councils, residents of which decided to unite. According to the Law of Ukraine adopted in 1997, a community, also known as "hromada", is composed of its residents who are united by living in village, settlement, city on permanent basis or voluntary association of residents of several villages that has one administrative center. The communities form raions, several raions form oblast. City communities of cities Kiev and Sevastopol have a special status and are not part of any raion or oblast. According to December 2019 draft constitutional changes submitted to parliament by PresidentVolodymyr Zelensky United territorial communities are planned to replace the Raions of Ukraine. On 6 March 2020Prime MinisterDenys Shmyhal stated that 1,045 united territorial communities had been established and that 350 more had to be created.
History
Active formation of these communities started in 2015 and is part of couple of reforms such as the decentralization reform and the administrative division reform. It is planned that they will replace all councils. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's June 2014 draft constitutional amendments proposed changing the administrative divisions of Ukraine, which should include regions, districts and "hromadas". On 5 February 2015 the Ukrainian parliament adopted the law "On voluntary association of territorial communities" that creates united territorial communities meaning settlement councils, rural councils and a city of district significance can create a new administrative unit. Any amalgamated hromada with a city as an administrative centre is an urban hromada, any amalgamated hromada with an urban-type settlement as an administrative centre is a settlement hromada, and any amalgamated hromada with a village as an administrative centre is a rural hromada. New local elections in these united territorial communities were then held. 226 will be holding elections in 2018 and 2019. The first 252 were held in 2017. The Law "On Local Self-Government in Ukraine" stipulates that local budgets should have enough money to be administered by local self-government bodies. Because many of the small rural councils and cities of district significance could never hope to do this the new administrative unit united territorial community was created. United territorial communities are planned to replace the Raions of Ukraine according to December 2019 draft constitutional changes submitted to parliament by President Volodymyr Zelensky. On 6 March 2020 Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal stated that 1,045 united territorial communities had already been established in Ukraine, noting that 350 more had to be created.
