[Conference] How to facilitate recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine? The role of European development banks

Since the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, European national and multi-lateral development banks have been at the forefront of the support, recovery, and reconstruction effort. And since 2024, they have wielded the Ukraine Investment Framework (UIF) to do so. As Pillar II of the larger €50bn Ukraine Facility, the UIF is endowed with an envelope of €9.5bn of EU-backed financial instruments such as grants and guarantees, aiming to leverage upwards of €40bn in investment. It is a vehicle through which the EU collaborates with the Ukrainian government, European states, and national and multilateral development banks, in order to identify and act on promising investment projects and guide their implementation. This roundtable seeks to discuss and highlight the difficulties encountered in this process, the positive experiences and successes, and answer the question: how might this process be structured in a better way in order to facilitate even better results?

Speakers

• Gabriel Blanc - Team Leader, Reconstruction of Ukraine at the European Commission
• Inna Melnykovska - Jean Monnet Fellow, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUI
• Laszlo Bruszt - Professor of Sociology at the Central European University, Director of the CEU Democracy Institute
• Vyacheslav Ovechkin - Loan Officer, European Investment Bank
• Elleanor Robins - Principal Investment Officer, Infrastructure, Europe – Ukraine Lead, IFC
• Chair: Matthias Thiemann - Professor of European Public Policy, Sciences Po, CEE

Recording of the conference