October 17,  2023

The following is a press release:

Gdańsk pledges €220,000 to support Lviv's rehabilitation efforts during a visit by a delegation from the European Committee of the Regions.

Representatives of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) have travelled to Lviv, the largest city in western Ukraine, to see how see how cities and regions in the EU can help Ukrainian local and regional governments with their emergency needs, with reconstruction and with EU-related reforms.

During the visit – the first held in Ukraine by the CoR's Working Group on Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion of the country – Gdańsk, a sister city of Lviv, donated 1 million zlotys (€220,000) to Lviv's Unbroken project, which is intended to provide full emergency and long-term care for people who have suffered complex, life-changing injuries. The city has so far treated 15,000 Ukrainians wounded as a result of the war.

Mayor Aleksandra Dulkiewicz of Gdańsk, a sister city of Lviv, on 17 October pledged 1 million zlotys (€220,000) to the project on behalf of her city, describing the donation as "solidarity from Gdańsk, the city of freedom and solidarity, for a unique project that it is a real chance for thousands of victims of this terrible war to live and work for a free and independent Ukraine. We want to confirm the truth of the Polish saying that true friends are found in need."

Andriy Sadovyi, Mayor of Lviv, described the Unbroken project as an attempt to create a "rehabilitation eco-system" and praised the support of Lviv's sister cities, which include Gdańsk and Vilnius. He said: "Last year, the European Union agreed to provide €19.6 million for the construction of social housing for patients of the Unbroken Centre. Thanks to the contribution last year of the Lithuanian city of Vilnius, whose mayor, Valdas Benkunskas, is here today, and this important agreement with the mayor of Gdańsk, two floors will be built thanks to the support of European cities."

Participants in the meeting of the CoR's Working Group on Ukraine emphasised the need to strengthen decentralisation and for the EU – including cities and regions – to offer long-term support to Ukraine's local and regional administrations, which are faced with the triple challenge of providing public services during a war, starting reconstruction, and developing long-term recovery and development plans. Speakers included Oleksandra Azarkhina, Ukraine's Deputy Minister for Infrastructure.

Mayor Dulkiewicz, who chaired the Working Group meeting, said: "The choice of Lviv as the venue for the meeting of the Working Group on Ukraine is a clear signal that we were, we are and will be in solidarity with our Ukrainian allies and friends. Regardless of the crises breaking out in other parts of the world, to which we also need to react decisively, restoring territorial integrity, peace, and then rebuilding Ukraine and its entry into the European community and NATO remains a priority of ours."

Every region, city and town in Ukraine should have a partner in the EU, Mayor Sadovyi told the meeting, identifying "expertise " as one of the crucial benefits of his city's international partnerships. He said: "We have to start training thousands of Ukrainian specialists, who have to study and prepare to work for the benefit of Ukraine. I want to encourage you to invest your time and love in the education of our citizens, who should be the first ones to be ready for integration. Our communities need your expertise."

The newly appointed head of the EU delegation in Kyiv, Ambassador Katarína Mathernová, said: "It was heartening to join the European Committee of the Regions for this working visit. Municipalities are a pillar of Ukraine's resilience. Deepening cooperation of municipalities at the European level can only be beneficial – notably during the full-scale Russian war and in view of Ukraine's EU candidate status. This is also why decentralisation remains essential. It shows how the European principles of subsidiarity or multi-level governance operate in practice, even under immense pressure. A strong local self-government is an important asset for the enlargement process and a driver for growth during recovery."

Ukraine was in June 2022 recognised as a candidate member of the European Union. The European Commission will in the coming weeks publish an assessment of Ukraine's progress in meeting reform conditions set by the EU's Member States.

A Eurobarometer survey published on 9 October found that more than four in ten local and regional politicians (45%) believe that regions and cities can contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine. The survey was commissioned by the European Committee of the Regions, which is a founding member of the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.

The delegation, which included members of the six European political groups represented in the CoR, laid a wreath at a memorial to those killed since 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, annexing Crimea and seizing parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine.

An estimated five million internally displaced people (IDPs) have passed through Lviv since February 2022, after Russia tried to seize control of the rest of the country. Around 150,000 IDPs are now resident in Lviv. Though close to Polish border, Lviv itself has repeatedly come under attack from Russian missiles.

Mayor Sadovyi visited Brussels on 10-12 October to address the plenary session of the CoR. He also spoke at an event on Ukraine's reconstruction at the European Week of Regions and Cities, the largest event in the EU's calendar.

In May 2023, Lviv became the first Ukrainian city to set up a representative office in Brussels, taking up an offer of office space under the CoR 10 point support package for Ukraine. The All-Ukrainian Association of Communities, the city of Vinnitsya and – since 13 October – Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council now have offices in the CoR.

Background:

The Unbroken project in Lviv is a national rehabilitation centre for people who have been crippled and wounded during Russia's war on Ukraine. It is a facility that provides comprehensive medical care, including physical and psychological rehabilitation, as well as prosthetic and orthotic services. The far-reaching plans include a new tramline to the centre, to ease access for people with disabilities. The EU is supporting the Unbroken 'rehabilitation eco-system' with nearly €20 million to house internally displaced people undergoing rehabilitation.

Lviv is the seventh-largest city in Ukraine, with a population of over 700,000 people. Russian missile strikes have killed and injured a number of civilians and destroyed or damaged civilian infrastructure, including apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals. As well as hosting a large number of internally displaced people, the city now hosts hundreds of businesses that have re-located from other parts of the country. Lviv has city partnerships with, among others, Gdańsk and Warsaw in Poland, Vilnius in Lithuania, Freiburg in Germany, and Reykjavik in Iceland.

The European Committee of the Regions delegation included: Aleksandra Dulkiewicz (PL/EPP), mayor of Gdańsk and Chair of the Working Group on Ukraine and the following Working Group members: Christophe Rouillon (FR/PES), mayor of Coulaines and president of the PES group; AnchorNiina Ratilainen (FI/Greens), member of Turku City Council and co-president of the Greens; Anchor AnchorPatrick Molinoz (FR/PES), vice-president of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region and chair of the CoR's commission for citizenship, governance, institutional and external affairs (CIVEX); AnchorValdas Benkunskas (LT/EPP), mayor of Vilnius; Antje Grotheer (DE/PES), vice-president of Bremen City Parliament; Christian Debeve (FR/eenew Europe) of member of the Grand Est Regional Council; Andres Jaadla (EE/Renew Europe), member of the Rakvere City Council;; Pavel Branda (CZ/ECR), deputy mayor of Rádlo; Mirosław Lech (PL/EA), mayor of Korycin. Władysław Ortyl (PL/ECR), president of the Podkarpackie Region, also took part in the meeting.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi participated in a debate on the Ukraine's reconstruction at the CoR on 11 October. The plenary was also addressed by Tetiana Yehorova-Lutsenko, President of the Ukrainian Association of District and Regional Councils, and – by video – Oleksiy Kuleba, executive secretary of Ukraine's Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and a deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. The debate can be re-watched on the website of the European Committee of the Regions.The European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Reconstruction of Ukraine was launched in June 2022 by Ukrainian, European and European Union associations of regions and cities, and its members include local and national administrations and a range of institutional partners. The European Committee of the Regions is a founding member of the Alliance and serves as its secretariat. The Alliance participates in the Ukraine Recovery Conference, an annual international conference to coordinate international support for Ukraine's emergency humanitarian needs, its reconstruction, and its long-term recovery.

The European Committee of the Regions on 11 October adopted an opinion by Dario Nardella (IT/PES), mayor of Florence, with recommendations calling on the European Union to increase the size of what will be its funding tool for Ukraine, the Ukraine Facility, and to channel more of the money to strengthen the capacity of Ukraine's local and regional administrations to meet the challenges of reconstruction, recovery, and accession to the EU. The opinion also recommends that the principles of the EU's own regional-development policies should be reflected in Ukraine's reconstruction policy. For more, please read the press release.

The European Committee of the Regions began working with Ukrainian regions and cities in 2015, when it established a Task-Force to provide advice on Ukraine's decentralisation process. In April 2020 the task-force was upgraded to a Working Group, under the auspices of the Conference of the Local and Regional Authorities for the Eastern Partnership (CORLEAP). The Working Group aims to provide targeted political and technical support to Ukrainian partners to help them achieve good governance at all levels, reinforce local democracy, and advance decentralisation reform.

Ukraine applied for EU membership in February 2022 and was granted EU candidate status in June 2022. The upcoming European Commission "Enlargement Package" for 2023 will be the first to address Ukraine as a candidate for EU membership.

Contact:

Press officer: Andrew Gardner, Tel. +32 473 843 981, andrew.gardner@cor.europa.eu

Audiovisual material: For photos, please visit the CoR's Flickr page or contact: audiovisualCoR@cor.europa.eu, tel. +32 2 282 2275