Water tariffs: trilateral workshop drives joint learning between Ukraine, Poland, and Germany

On 12 Novem­ber 2025, a tri­lat­er­al work­shop on water tar­iff-set­ting brought togeth­er sec­tor experts from Ukraine, Poland, and Ger­many dur­ing the ReBuild Ukraine. The event was co-organ­ised by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Water and Waste­water Util­i­ties of Ukraine “Ukr­vodokanalekologiya”, the Pol­ish Water­works Cham­ber of Com­merce “IGWP”, and the Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion of Local Util­i­ties “VKU”, with sup­port from the FELICITY II pro­gramme.

The work­shop brought togeth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives from nation­al author­i­ties, reg­u­la­tors, munic­i­pal­i­ties, and util­i­ties to explore the prac­ti­cal­i­ties behind water tar­iff-set­ting across the three coun­tries. Par­tic­i­pants exam­ined how dif­fer­ent mod­els address the com­plex task of ensur­ing finan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty while main­tain­ing afford­abil­i­ty and meet­ing EU align­ment objec­tives.

Inter­ac­tive ses­sions enabled peer exchange on real-world chal­lenges faced by oper­a­tors: from cost recov­ery and invest­ment needs to com­mu­ni­cat­ing tar­iff struc­tures to res­i­dents. Key take­aways includ­ed:

— A joint vision that tar­iffs must be trans­par­ent, pre­dictable, and social­ly accept­able;

— Agree­ment on the need for bench­mark­ing: con­sis­tent data, cost com­par­isons, and per­for­mance indi­ca­tors;

— Pri­ori­tis­ing align­ment with EU stan­dards;

— Empha­sis on clear pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion about ser­vice qual­i­ty and pric­ing log­ic.

The exchange demon­strat­ed that joint learn­ing and sus­tained coop­er­a­tion are key to build­ing a mod­ern, resilient water gov­er­nance sys­tem. Dia­logue between util­i­ties and pol­i­cy­mak­ers will con­tin­ue.

FELICITY II is an inter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive sup­port­ing sus­tain­able urban infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment in East­ern Euro­pean and Cen­tral Asia coun­tries, aim­ing to reduce green­house gas emis­sions. The pro­gramme pro­vides tech­ni­cal and ana­lyt­i­cal assis­tance to munic­i­pal­i­ties to help them design and imple­ment cli­mate-friend­ly invest­ments in water sup­ply, waste­water man­age­ment, and ener­gy-effi­cient build­ings. 

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 Gov­ern­ment, under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).