The relevance of the paper is due to the fact that at the current stage of the development of legal science, there is a need to unify the views of scientists and legislation regarding the composition of entities protecting the rights and interests of city councils.
The purpose of the paper is to formulate a categorization of the entities protecting the rights and interests of city councils in the economic sphere.
The paper analyzes the approaches, positions of the legislation and systematizes the features of the categorization of subjects of this category, including: the feature of priority of legal personality (subjects of the first, second and third priority categories of protection entities are distinguished ), a sign of territorial jurisdiction, a sign of authority (or an organizational and legal sign).
It was determined that the list of subjects of this type was formulated in the content of the considered signs, taking into account the grounds related to violations of the rights and interests of local communities and city councils, provided for by legislation. It was established that within the framework of the author's approach, the subjects of protection of the rights and interests of local communities in Ukraine in view of the grounds associated with violations of the specified type consist of: 1) at the pre-trial (claim) and judicial level: local communities, district and regional councils, city councils, communal institutions, organizations, enterprises of cities, whose powers include (does not include) management of communal property of territories; 2) exclusively at the judicial level: courts of relevant jurisdictions; communal institutions, organizations, enterprises of cities, those from which independent claims are not made within the framework of court cases and which are on the side of the plaintiffs (city councils).
It has been established that the presented categorization of the subjects of protection of the rights and interests of city councils is aimed at ensuring the development of the theoretical base in the context of the specified issues.
