Strengthening municipal financial resilience for sustainable investment in Ukraine

On 17–18 Sep­tem­ber 2026, the Finan­cial Resilience of Com­mu­ni­ties Forum took place in Lviv with the sup­port of the FELICITY II pro­gramme. This year, the Forum brought togeth­er more than 470 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of munic­i­pal­i­ties, pub­lic author­i­ties, finan­cial insti­tu­tions and inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions to dis­cuss how Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ties can strength­en their finan­cial resilience and trans­late local infra­struc­ture needs into well-pre­pared invest­ment projects. 

For Ukrain­ian munic­i­pal­i­ties, finan­cial resilience has become par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant. The war, exten­sive recon­struc­tion needs, the need to main­tain essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices and grow­ing cli­mate chal­lenges require not only addi­tion­al resources, but also new approach­es to plan­ning and imple­ment­ing invest­ments. 

At the same time, financ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties are expand­ing – from grants and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to lend­ing instru­ments offered by inter­na­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions and Euro­pean pro­grammes. As Ukraine pro­gress­es towards EU inte­gra­tion, these oppor­tu­ni­ties are expect­ed to grow fur­ther. Yet access to financ­ing is only part of the equa­tion: munic­i­pal­i­ties also need the capac­i­ties to iden­ti­fy suit­able instru­ments, pre­pare viable invest­ment projects and work effec­tive­ly with inter­na­tion­al financ­ing part­ners. 

We want munic­i­pal­i­ties to be not sim­ply recip­i­ents of assis­tance, but well-pre­pared part­ners for inter­na­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions and donors. When mobil­is­ing financ­ing, they should be able to invest not only in recov­ery, but also in their future – in ener­gy effi­cien­cy, resource effi­cien­cy and reli­able infra­struc­ture that will serve com­mu­ni­ties for decades. Ulti­mate­ly, this is about the eco­nom­ic, infra­struc­tur­al, ener­gy and cli­mate resilience of our munic­i­pal­i­ties, said Oksana Oliynyk, Head of the Ukraine Com­po­nent of the FELICITY II pro­gramme, dur­ing the open­ing of the Forum. 

Against this back­ground, one of the key focus­es of this year’s Forum was the prac­ti­cal financ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able for munic­i­pal recov­ery and devel­op­ment. Vik­tori­ia Humen­na, Head of the Project Man­age­ment Unit “Ukraine Water Recov­ery”, pre­sent­ed prac­ti­cal exam­ples of invest­ment projects financed by inter­na­tion­al finan­cial insti­tu­tions, cov­er­ing the process from project prepa­ra­tion to nav­i­gat­ing the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures. 

Dr Alek­san­dar-Andri­ja Pejović, for­mer Min­is­ter of Euro­pean Affairs and Nation­al Coor­di­na­tor for EU Pre-Acces­sion Assis­tance of Mon­tene­gro, shared Montenegro’s expe­ri­ence of access­ing financ­ing dur­ing the EU acces­sion process. The dis­cus­sion focused on high-qual­i­ty invest­ment project prepa­ra­tion, munic­i­pal capac­i­ties for imple­men­ta­tion and Montenegro’s expe­ri­ence with a Revolv­ing Fund sup­port­ing munic­i­pal projects. 

Finan­cial resilience is also close­ly con­nect­ed to cli­mate resilience. Invest­ments in munic­i­pal infra­struc­ture pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty not only to replace out­dat­ed equip­ment or recon­struct dam­aged assets, but also to reduce ener­gy and resource con­sump­tion, low­er green­house gas emis­sions and cre­ate infra­struc­ture that is bet­ter pre­pared for future chal­lenges. 

By sup­port­ing plat­forms such as the Finan­cial Resilience of Com­mu­ni­ties Forum, FELICITY II con­tributes to strength­en­ing munic­i­pal­i­ties’ under­stand­ing of financ­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and their capac­i­ties to pre­pare sus­tain­able invest­ment projects. This sup­ports Ukraine’s broad­er tran­si­tion towards cli­mate-resilient infra­struc­ture and clos­er inte­gra­tion with the EU. 

FELICITY II is imple­ment­ed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank and with the sup­port of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty, under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).