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Date: 27 October 2021, Chamber of Local Authorities, Hemicycle, 09:30-12:00
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to be joining you today at the works of this session of the Congress and I would like to thank you for this opportunity.
As you may already know, the efforts for the local government reform in Cyprus have been continuous for the past 10 years. The current government has put this reform as a top priority and has consistently pursued a comprehensive legal reform of the local government. Although the need for this reform is widely acknowledged and accepted by all the stakeholders in Cyprus; the government, the political parties, the unions of municipalities and communities, there were different approaches and perspectives as to the elements of the new framework, that made the procedure long and complicated.
Today however, Cyprus is closer than ever to the reform of the local government, one of the most important reforms in the history of the Republic. The competent parliamentary committee is aiming to complete the discussion of the three draft legislations comprising the governmental proposal for the reform by the end of November, in order to present them before the plenary session for voting.
Already, a first and very important step towards this goal has been made on the 16th of last September when the Ηouse of Representatives adopted a bill on the postponement of the local elections that were due this December and the extension of the mandate of the present local Councils (both Municipal and Community) until 2024, when the next elections for Europarliament will take place, so as to coincide with the elections for local government. This ammendement will provide sufficient time for the changes and adjustments that need to take place between the adoption of the new legal framework and the actual implementation.
The government proposal for the new framework on local government comprises of three bills.
The bill on Municipalities primarily aims at securing financial and administrative autonomy for the Municipalities by waiving bureaucratic procedures on approvals and replacing the state grant with own income sources. The transfer of a large number of responsibilities from the central state to the local authorities, concerns the real daily needs of the citizen such as the granting of permits currently provided by the District Administrations, social benefits, maintenance of infrastructures including school units etc. There is also more room to exercise initiative as well as autonomy in managing their own staff and at the same time new rules of transparency and democratic accountability are introduced together with increased civil participation in decision making.
In order to create financially viable new local entities, the amalgamation of existing Municipalities as well as Communities is deemed as a precondition. We need to create a real local government, with municipalities that will have the required "critical mass" in order to be able to offer the proposed competences, at the lowest possible cost.
The second bill refers to the Communities, where there is an agreement for the creation of local clusters, which will cover approximetely 300 communities, by providing collective services (collection and general management of waste, provision of Secretarial, Accounting and Technical services at central level). By this legistlation, we aim at creating administrative entities and infrastructures, that will be able to provide a wider range of services and which will effectively support the Community Councils in their obligations.
Lastly, the third bill concerns the creation of five District Local Government Organizations that will take over the responsibilities for the management of sewerage, water supply, solid waste and urban planning, thus replacing a number of existing Sewerage Councils, Water Supply Councils, Solid Waste Management Councils that are operating today on a local level. The main aim of this bill is to improve the efficiency of water supply, sewerage and solid waste management through economies of scale, as well as implementing a unilateral policy on the issuing of urban planning and building permits at a district level.
On drafting the reform bills, the Cyprus Government took particularly into consideration the recommendations made during the previous Congress monitoring report on the implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, most of which are also part of the current report. Our aim is to create new administratively autonomous and financially sustainable municipalities, as well as communities that can work together in clusters in order to provide the best possible services to the citizen. As already mentioned above, the new municipalities that will emerge through the revised legislation will have a wider range of competences which are now exercised by the central government, thus achieving to move the exercise of responsibilities closer to the citizen.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Having mentioned the above, I would like to assure you that the efforts of the Cyprus Government remain continuous towards achieving the adoption by the House of Parliament of the new legislative framework for the local government and further to that, towards the successful implementation of the new framework by 2024, always having in mind the provision of high-level services to each citizen of the Republic.