Ukraine has become the single largest recipient of development assistance (ODA) in the world since 2022, in addition to military aid received from partners. Despite the constraints of wartime, Kyiv has significantly improved the way it manages and allocates this assistance notably through the Public Investment Management (PIM) framework introduced in 2025. However, ensuring transparent governance, effective coordination and equitable allocation of aid and investment remains a major challenge. Further legislative reforms, stronger institutions, better process management and increased human resources are needed to replace the current ad hoc approach to allocating funds, including within the Strategic Investment Council established in 2024. This approach risks undermining stakeholders’ confidence and trust. To secure sufficient funding upstream and improve the efficiency and fairness of recovery efforts downstream, Ukraine should create a single ‘collector pipeline’ for reconstruction and recovery funding, bringing together parallel donor funding streams within one integrated digital platform. This would provide the government with a comprehensive overview to improve planning, coordinate investment decisions and strengthen public accountability. As a major donor and investment stakeholder, the EU has both the leverage and the technical expertise to support this project.
The scale of destruction wrought by Russia’s war of aggression has created immense recovery and reconstruction needs. Current estimates suggest that Ukraine will require at least €20 billion a year in external public funding over the coming decade, in addition to substantial private investment. Meanwhile, external budget support will need to continue as Ukraine’s high sovereign debt and the slow recovery of its economy will prevent it from generating sufficient public revenues, even if defence spending declines. At the same time, donors face mounting fiscal pressures compounded by rising defence expenditure, making greater downstream efficiency in the use of recovery funds more important than ever.
To strengthen the PIM as the overarching governance framework for recovery and reconstruction, Ukraine should establish a single collector pipeline that integrates all recovery and reconstruction funding under the oversight of a single lead public authority. As the backbone of the Single Project Pipeline (SPP) for prioritising and managing reconstruction projects, this collector pipeline should integrate parallel donor mechanisms and various ministry processes within a single framework anchored in Ukraine’s overall recovery strategy. This would strengthen the government’s capacity to absorb funding while improving the transparency and equitable allocation of reconstruction resources. The system should also facilitate subsidiarity by giving local communities a greater role in identifying and shaping reconstruction priorities (in line with the EU’s Code of Conduct and international development standards like the Kampala Principles). More extensive use of digital and AI-enabled communication tools could also enhance public participation throughout the process. Ensuring equitable access to reconstruction funding is essential. Public opinion surveys in Ukraine show that the demand for justice ranks second only to the desire for peace, while the uneven geographic impact of the war makes equitable resource allocation all the more important. Unless local communities and regions are given the means to participate effectively, including the capacity to develop complex reconstruction projects, there is a risk that existing inequalities will deepen as a result of disparities in access to resources.
The core infrastructure underpinning this collector pipeline should be a single, integrated digital platform that will build on the existing DREAM interface. The platform should replace the multiple tools currently used to track reconstruction and recovery funding and provide a single, comprehensive and reliable overview of financial commitments and disbursements. This would help strategic government planning by providing a common knowledge base for targeted interventions at the local, regional and state levels. It would also increase transparency, reduce corruption risks and help ensure that funding is allocated on the basis of clearly defined and assessed needs.
At present, DREAM contains incomplete and inconsistently structured data and is not interoperable with parallel databases. As a result, it is used only selectively and plays a limited role in planning and managing recovery efforts. To become the integrated operational platform underpinning Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction architecture, it requires a major upgrade. Only then will it be able to function as a genuine collector pipeline, managing tens of thousands of reconstruction projects involving multiple funding sources and stakeholders, including ministries, municipalities, international financial institutions (IFIs), donors and private investors.
Delivering this upgrade will require stronger legal and institutional foundations so that the platform becomes a truly integrated solution rather than an ‘umbrella’ for multiple systems. It should serve as the operational platform for planning and managing reconstruction projects while strengthening accountability through full visibility of funding, project selection and implementation. Such transparency is indispensable for building public trust. The government should put in place harmonised project templates, assessment methodologies and data standards, in line with OECD recommendations. It should also create dedicated regional channels so that local governments and communities can submit project proposals directly. The EU should support this effort through a combination of conditionality and technical assistance. It could build on initiatives such as the EIB-EBRD jointly managed FIRST programme, which aims to strengthen Ukraine’s capacity to prepare large-scale infrastructural projects in the future, while scaling up the G7-backed Ukraine Donor Platform as the main mechanism for coordinating international donor support.