The Transparent Cities program examined whether residents can attend city council sessions and how clearly cities have spelled out their access rules. It found that only 10 out of 100 cities formulated conditions for attending a session in a way that raises no additional questions.
Under the Law of Ukraine on Local Self-Government in Ukraine, every citizen has the right to be present at meetings of local self-government bodies. To understand how city councils implement this right, analysts checked whether municipalities have published on their official websites a procedure for access to city council sessions and an option to submit an online application to attend.
Most city councils stated* that the access procedure is contained in their Rules of Procedure. However, not all cities have published their Rules. In particular, they were missing for Vyshneve, Dubno, Mohyliv-Podilskyi, Pervomaisk, and Pivdenne. Not all cities publish finalized, up-to-date consolidated versions with all amendments introduced in recent years either. As a result, users must search for and combine all updates themselves to get the current version. This is the situation in Boryslav, Zhmerynka, Kovel, Kostopil, Lubny, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Pivdennoukrainsk, Rivne, Synelnykove, Uman, Fastiv, and Sheptytskyi. The pages hosting the Rules of Procedure for the Lutsk and Kharkiv city councils do not indicate at all how current those documents are.
The analysis revealed typical gaps in how municipalities have formalized their approaches to residents’ presence at council sessions. For example, in Varash and Uzhhorod, the right to be present at meetings is formally enshrined in the Rules, but there are no clear conditions on how to participate — such as which documents are needed to attend a session, or how to register for an online meeting. In Kyiv, a procedure exists for attending in-person sessions, but steps for participating in online sessions are not described. In Romny, remote meetings are not provided for. To attend an in-person session, residents must file an application the day before, yet there is no way to do this online.
Only 10 cities have comprehensively described conditions for access to meetings — Bila Tserkva, Volodymyr, Zaporizhzhia, Lozova, Obukhiv, Slavuta, Stryi, Chernivtsi, Chornomorsk, and Shostka. In these cities, prior registration for in-person sessions is not required because registration takes place immediately before the meeting upon presentation of an identity document. However, remote meetings in these cities are either not provided for at all, or the Rules specify that only certain persons may participate, and the public is not among them.
5 out of 100 city councils studied — Brody, Zolochiv, Kamianske, Kryvyi Rih, and Okhtyrka— denied residents access to plenary sessions at the level of their Rules of Procedure.
Under current Ukrainian law, local self-government bodies must be open to residents when exercising their powers. In practice, a lack of access for residents to city council meetings restricts citizens’ participation — both in exercising local self-government and in accessing public information. Holding “closed meetings” on a permanent basis is not envisaged by Ukraine’s legislation on local self-government.
The program emphasizes that it is important for municipalities to ensure proper access for residents to meetings of local self-government bodies. This enables city residents to obtain clear and complete information about their community’s affairs and to voice their views on important decisions that affect their future. Open and transparent work by local institutions and public authorities is the key to decisions being made fairly and in the interests of the entire community at the local level.
*At the end of 2024, the Transparent Cities program sent questionnaires to municipalities to collect information for the Transparency Ranking of 100 Ukrainian Cities, which, among other things, asked about access to city council meetings.