Transparency International Ukraine is an accredited representative of Global Transparency International. Since 2012, TI Ukraine has been helping Ukraine grow stronger. The organization takes a comprehensive approach to the development and implementation of changes for reduction of corruption levels in certain areas.

TI Ukraine launched the Transparent Cities program in 2017. Its goal is to foster constructive and meaningful dialogue between citizens, local authorities, and the government to promote high-quality municipal governance, urban development, and effective reconstruction. For eight years, the program compiled an annual Transparency Ranking of the 100 largest cities in Ukraine, and in 2025 it launched the European City Index. 

The program's experts produce high-quality analysis of various aspects of the interaction between government and citizens, and of transparency and accountability in Ukraine's cities. This includes, in particular, processes such as decolonization, housing policy, and more.

In 2025, Transparent Cities announced a pilot study of Ukrainian cities' readiness for EU integration. It aims to assess how prepared Ukrainian cities are for European integration in good governance, transparency, and accountability.

https://ti-ukraine.org/en 

https://transparentcities.in.ua/en 

Why Did the European City Index Replace the Transparency Ranking of the 100 Largest Cities?

Since 2017, Transparent Cities has measured local governance through the Transparency Ranking. This comprehensive national study assessed Ukraine's 100 largest cities simultaneously against uniform criteria, making it possible to compare them and see the nationwide picture.

The Ranking gave cities clear benchmarks and gave the public a way to check how openly local authorities operate. Thanks to this large-scale approach, many transparency practices gradually became standard for city councils.

But the world has moved on, and so has the context in which communities operate. The full-scale war, new requirements for local governance, European integration, and the far greater role of digital services exposed the limits of the old format.

First, the Ranking captured the situation only once a year. Each city received one overall score for the previous year, along with a long list of problems across different areas. In practice, this often meant a city had to change a great deal all at once, without the resources to do so.

Second, the assessment methodology was known in advance. This helped cities prepare, but it also let them tailor their work to specific criteria, meeting requirements to score points rather than to serve users. A striking example is Ternopil, where analysts found that data on the city council's official website had been falsified to earn extra points. Since then, the program has excluded Ternopil City Council from its studies.

Third, the assessment relied mainly on city councils' official responses and websites, without considering user experience or residents' interests. A document might be published yet buried in an obscure corner of the website where no one could find it. A service might exist, but the only link to it might sit in a two-year-old news item, with no dedicated e-services section at all.

European integration is also shifting from the national to the local level. Many changes tied to Ukraine's path to the EU must work in city councils' day-to-day operations: in services, budgets, open data, resident participation, and government reporting. The standards by which EU communities operate (clear procedures, accountability, and integrity) are becoming increasingly important. So we wanted to assess how closely city practices approach European standards of local governance while remaining adapted to the Ukrainian context.

This is what created the need for a new format.

The solution: the European City Index

In response to these changes, Transparent Cities launched the European City Index. It shows not only whether a city council meets formal requirements but also how well its decisions, services, and procedures work in practice. For communities themselves, the Index is meant to serve as a guide: where strong practices already exist and what to change next.

The assessment is now conducted in stages. Over the year, we examine different topics separately. This gives cities time to work on specific problems instead of receiving one long list of issues at year-end. There is also an element of competition: block results are released gradually, so the overall picture remains open until the cycle ends.

We publish the methodology together with the results. This way, a city cannot tailor its website or individual documents to a specific set of criteria in advance. All communities are assessed under the same conditions. This should motivate city councils to focus on residents' interests and legal requirements rather than chasing individual criteria just for a better score.

We now draw on more sources. Analysts assess city council websites, datasets, state systems, portals, and registers, and some large data arrays are checked automatically. We also conduct a media analysis of city council reporting during the peak winter period and carry out our own checks, including of hotlines and access to public information. This helps cross-reference information from different sources and reveal what is not always visible on a city's official website.

The bar for the practices themselves is also higher. It is no longer enough simply to publish a document or launch a service. What matters is whether the information is up to date, easy to find, and actually usable.

Why “European”?

European integration is increasingly moving from the national to the local level. Many changes related to Ukraine's path to the EU must work in city councils' daily operations.

It is at the local level that people receive most public services, use e-services, see how funds are spent, take part in discussing decisions, and interact with the authorities. That makes the quality of local governance part of European integration, too.

This is the logic behind the European City Index. It checks how closely Ukrainian cities' practices align with European approaches to openness, accountability, resident engagement, digital services, financial management, integrity, and data management.

That said, we do not copy European models literally. The methodology adapts them to Ukrainian conditions and translates general principles into specific criteria that can be verified at the city level.

In developing the Euroindex, experts drew on the Council of Europe's 12 Principles of Good Democratic Governance, the Ukraine Facility Plan, the European Commission's 2023–2025 enlargement reports, and other EU integration documents.

What did the pilot year examine, and what were the results?

The pilot European City Index consisted of six thematic blocks (subindices), each assessing a separate aspect of local self-government bodies' performance. In 2025, program experts examined how municipalities ensure openness on their websites, handle e-services and open data, manage public finances, and build integrity and accountability systems.

The pilot sample comprised 11 cities: Kyiv and 10 regional centers (Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Kropyvnytskyi, Lutsk, Lviv, Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Khmelnytskyi, and Chernihiv). Together they represent all of Ukraine's macro-regions and different wartime contexts, from cities in the rear to cities designated as territories of potential hostilities. Each thematic block is assessed against 40 indicators, with a maximum score of 100 points. 

Although the study ran through 2025–2026, we assessed cities' practices and data for 2025 specifically. Because block results were released gradually, analysts verified some information in 2026, after cities had published their annual reports and other year-end documents.

This format captures both what a city did during the year and the results that become visible only once the reporting period is over.

Importantly, less than three months pass between the analysts' assessment and the publication of the data, which gives the results and recommendations even greater practical value. 

Each thematic block contained 40 criteria. In total, analysts assessed 2,640 indicators during the pilot. The indicators carried different weights: criteria that are more complex or more important to overall governance quality earned more points, and simpler ones earned fewer.

The first European City Index revealed a rather mixed picture. Cities performed best in openness, e-services, and integrity. Yet even in these areas, average results were far from high. None of the six blocks reached a level where one could say cities are already doing well.

What has changed in the Euroindex?

Single points of entry and partial automation

One of the key changes in the Euroindex is how we search for information. Analysts now look at city council websites the way an ordinary user does. Residents should not have to know the city council's structure or department names, or guess which section hides the document they need.

That is why the methodology introduces “single points of entry”: topic pages that bring together the key information on a specific issue in one place. For example, someone interested in the budget should find a separate, clear section on the budget. Someone looking for humanitarian aid should not have to dig through years of news or a document archive.

We identified 15 such thematic pages, and analysts searched for information primarily through them.

In the pilot year, we still made exceptions and, in some blocks, checked the entire website if the information was missing from the relevant section. Going forward, however, the requirements will be stricter. If a service or document exists but people cannot easily find it, that in itself is a problem.

This is one of the key shifts in approach: a website should be built around residents' logic, not the city council's internal logic. 

Automated checks through state systems

The Euroindex has also gained depth because we now verify some data automatically through state registers and systems.

In the Open data block, analysts worked with city councils' accounts on data.gov.ua and checked 30 datasets important for European integration. They looked not only at whether a file had been published at all, but also at whether it was up to date, machine-readable, and compliant with the Ministry of Digital Transformation's requirements.

The Public finance assessment drew on data from Open Budget, Prozorro, and Prozorro.Sale. This revealed not only what city councils posted on their own websites but also actual data on procurement and the use of municipal property.

In the Integrity block, analysts worked with NACP data, the Unified State Register of Declarations, the Unified Whistleblower Reporting Portal, the Integrity Portal, and High Anti-Corruption Court case data through the HACC Decided platform.

Self-assessment forms and roadmaps

Finally, the Euroindex has given cities practical development tools. Using the self-assessment forms, any community can test its own practices and identify weak spots. Detailed recommendations give city authorities a concrete course of action: which documents to add, how to structure a page more logically for users, and how to put complex standards into practice, turning public resources into a convenient digital space for every resident.

Why does our study matter?

For the state, the European City Index shows how European integration reforms work at the community level. Cities can solve some problems on their own. Others recur across communities and require national-level solutions, such as problems with state registers, digital infrastructure, or unclear rules.

For international partners, the Index can serve as an independent source of data on how communities operate, where they need support, and which practices actually deliver results.

For civil society organizations and the media, it offers a way to discuss the quality of local governance through specific criteria and data. They can see a city's strengths and weaknesses, compare it with others, and track whether the situation changes over time. This makes it an important advocacy tool for change in their own cities.

The Index is also useful for communities themselves. The data, self-assessment forms, BI platform, and recommendations help city councils see for themselves what already works well and where change is needed. Ultimately, high scores in the study can serve as an additional argument for building constructive cooperation with donors and investors.

After the pilot, the Euroindex moves on to its next stage. We plan to expand coverage to the 50 largest cities, improve automated assessment, and further develop the BI platform and self-assessment tools. We will also use the accumulated data in consultations with communities and in addressing problems that cannot be solved at the level of a single city.

This research was prepared with the support of the MATRA Programme of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine and with financial support from Sweden within the framework of the  Transparency International Ukraine institutional development program.

The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine or the Government of Sweden.