The President of the Republic said that the Recovery Fund is the most important legacy that this administration is leaving to the country. It is not a matter of party affiliation, it is not a matter of a government. It is a matter of planning, which really creates a new order of things. The Ministry of Home Affairs is the preeminent ministry that is closest to the people. It is the largest of the Ministries of State in terms of actions.
Eight specific actions and reform interventions are included in the Plan, the top of which, and the one I was asked to intervene on, is the reform of local government.
My colleague Lt. Finance Minister said that reforms are always difficult, and of course we are trying to resolve these difficulties so that we can make this very big reform a reality.
Local government reform, which we describe as the top reform in the Ministry of Interior, was put from the beginning by this government, very high on the list of priorities and certainly in the announcements of the President of the Republic himself.
As a result of our efforts, we were able to pass a modern legislative framework for local government consisting of three different pieces of legislation covering the functioning of municipalities, communities and the newly established institution of Provincial Self-Government Organizations, which is something truly innovative.
Here I want to allow me to address a big thank you to our partners, who are none other than the legislature, because through consensus, through consultation, we succeeded, being a parliamentary minority government, to have a unanimous position on the reform of local government, which demonstrates the maturity of Cypriot politicians as a whole, whether they are in the executive or in the legislature.
The new legislative framework includes the establishment of 20 new entities, through the merger of the 30 existing municipalities together with 63 communes, which will be both more powerful, but also financially viable, with administrative and financial autonomy, which is - and we are - in line with the standards of the European Charter of Local Self-Government.
The new municipalities will have strengthened internal control and transparency mechanisms, which we have demanded from the outset, increased powers and greater opportunity for citizen participation in decision making, which is what is required.
The citizen will now be able to enjoy better quality services at the lowest possible cost. Of course, in addition to the mayoral districts, we are creating 30 clusters of municipalities in the territory of the Republic, out of 357, which creates a new dynamic in self-government.
As I mentioned earlier, the reform includes under the third bill passed, the creation of a new institution, which is the Provincial Self-Government Organization, which takes over at the provincial level a number of very important utilities, which are currently fragmented.
And I'm talking about water supply, sewage and solid waste management, but extremely important is planning permission for development. The goal, of course, is to take advantage of the economies of scale that this amalgamation creates and to provide opportunities for better services, faster services and certainly higher quality services.
We are currently in the transition stage of implementation and there is a lot of work to be done and more to be done in the next 17 months left until June 2024 when we will have completed the reform, with the first local government municipal elections taking place at the same time as the European elections in May 2024.
Two main pillars of the work being done in the transition stage.
In the first year, the Ministry of Interior has already organized a number of information workshops at political and technical level, in parallel and simultaneously with the effort to implement the provisions of the new draft laws.
The Central Advisory Committee has been established, in which the Ministries of Interior and Finance, as well as the Presidents of the Associations of Municipalities and Communities participate, and a comprehensive road map has been prepared, which includes the actions related to the preparation of the implementation of the new model. Working groups were also set up, staffed by both technocrats from the relevant Ministries and members of the associations of municipalities and communities, to deal with staffing and personnel issues, the budget, information systems, the licensing of the development - possibly the most difficult of what remains to be done - the training and management of the change, as well as public information (this is something we will be doing continuously).
In conclusion, through this ongoing effort, the goal and objective is to be ready, and we will be ready.
We have included in the Recovery and Resilience Plan, an education and training project for both elected officials and technocrats, at a cost of €840,000, lasting 30 months, to be implemented by the Council of Europe's Centre of Expertise for Good Governance, with the cooperation of the Associations of Municipalities and Communities, as well as the Academy of Public Administration.
The different thematic modules, in which training will be provided, have been defined on the basis of educational tools and the conclusion is that, through this information, we want to structure and implement everything that the three laws provide with the necessary support of the state that is given since the Government has decided, along with the increased powers granted to local governments, to give the necessary financial self-sufficiency by increasing the fixed grant to local government by 65% from the current one
