Laying down of a new model of Ukraine’s administrative and territorial structure on the principles which eliminate the current imbalances, redistributing authorities between executive bodies and local self-government bodies, enhancing the capacity of local self-government – these are the main lines of the structural reforms of power decentralization which are currently underway in Ukraine.

Over the past 4 years, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on the initiative of the President of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted a number of laws aimed at implementing the Concept for reforming local self-government and the territorial arrangement of power. Experts and practitioners say that today the comprehensive reform, which is based primarily on the authority transfer from the State to local self-government bodies according to the subsidiarity principle, has become the most successful in our country. Thus, in particular, in the large territory of the State quite powerful self-sufficient merged territorial communities have been created and granted additional authorities and financial resources for active socio-economic development of their territories. However, the level of legislative support for the decentralization processes is still insufficient, both in terms of the number of such draft laws and their quality. Hence arises the need for its improvement by preparing such changes and additions, which would not contradict the Fundamental Law of Ukraine, in particular, with regard to the use of legal terms, and which would guarantee the irreversibility of positive achievements.

The purpose of the article is to analyze the specific features of power decentralization in Ukraine and the situation with its legislative support. The task set by the author is to determine the power decentralization prospects and also to identify and assess possible risks, for example, in case decentralization draft laws use the legal terms which essence is not consistent either with the object defined or with its features, or in case such essence generally contradicts the Constitution of Ukraine.

The article analyzes the implementation progress of the Concept for reforming local self-government and the territorial arrangement of power, draft laws on the administrative and territorial structure of the State, and outlines the innovations of legal terms within the framework of the reform. The author proves the need for amending the Constitution of Ukraine with regard to local self-government, territorial arrangement of power and the administrative and territorial structure. Proposals have been developed for the introduction of definitions aimed at enhancing the efficiency of legal regulation of the reform process

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