First draft of Ukraine's Government Centre project to be presented in May

The first draft of Ukraine's Government Centre project will be presented at the meeting of the Coordination Council on Public Administration Reform this month. Source: Ukrainska Pravda's article A small government with a great prime minister. How Shmyhal's team wants to change the Cabinet of Ministers

Details: Currently, the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers is developing a draft law to establish the Government Centre.

Quote from Oleh Nemchinov, the Minister of the Cabinet: "We will work to transfer the regulatory functions, which are currently concentrated in the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers and four so-called regulatory ministries - the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation (each ministry submitting a draft government act must first obtain opinions on it from these four departments - ed.) to the platform of the newly created Government Centre." "Policy formulation is the prerogative of ministries, but the question is how to correctly shape a document that goes to the government, how to formalise it, how to ensure its implementation - this will probably be the task of the Government Centre. Ministries should focus on policy formulation, not its implementation," added Nemchinov.

Details: The Government Centre is intended to establish a unified approach to drafting legislation across various ministries, providing them with analytics and legal support, identifying and seeking funding for ministerial programs, managing joint document circulation, accounting, recruitment, and talent scouting, and ensuring that all changes align with the Cabinet of Ministers' strategic course and political program. The Government Centre is to become the sole structure responsible for coordinating the entire Cabinet's activities simultaneously. Meanwhile, ministry teams will be able to focus solely on political matters.

The only caveat that both government representatives and the expert community find concerning is the immediate and very noticeable strengthening of the prime minister's role. Quote from the article: "With such a Centre at his disposal, the head of the government will be able to dictate terms to any ministries in the real-time mode, influencing what they work on, what funds and for which programs they receive, and which projects can be brought to the Cabinet and when. Instead of 20 small manual Secretariats within the ministries, there will be a single huge structure under the prime minister.

At any moment, the ministries' entire "behind-the-scenes" internal workings will become the subject of daily observation and control by the prime minister."

Background:

Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said on 4 March that as part of the government's reform, the Cabinet plans to reduce the number of ministries by a third, and accordingly, the number of civil servants will be reduced.

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