Community Resilience and New Partnerships with European Cities: Serhii Morhunov Took Part in Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin

On June 11, Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 opened in Germany to support the country's recovery from the destruction of civilian and critical infrastructure caused by russian terrorist attacks. Among the participants of the international event were politicians, diplomats, as well as representatives of business, municipalities, civil society from different countries, etc. At the conference, our community was represented by a delegation headed by Vinnytsia Mayor Serhii Morhunov.

During his stay in Germany, Serhii Morhunov and his colleagues held a series of business meetings with foreign participants to discuss further cooperation between Vinnytsia and European cities in a horizontal plane.

On June 10, he and Vinnytsia Regional Council deputy Vladyslav Skalskyi presented one of the priority projects for the community at the U-Nation conference "Innovations for the Restoration of Ukraine." It is a rehabilitation and sports complex for which Vinnytsia is currently looking for investors. Such a facility is needed primarily for the rapid and high-quality restoration of the health of our military, who return from the front with numerous injuries and wounds.

On the sidelines of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024, the head of the community met, among others, with the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, as well as the head of the Burgundy-France-Comté region and President of the CIVEX Committee of the European Committee of the Regions, Patrick Molinoz.

"We thanked them for the opportunity to receive our children in the cities of Nancy and Dijon, and discussed the possibility of establishing partnerships with several French and German regions. In addition, we spoke with Andrea Rauber Saxer, Head of the Department for Bilateral Economic Relations and representative of the Federal Council on Trade Agreements. We discussed the establishment of cooperation between businesses in Switzerland, Vinnytsia and Vinnytsia region. We also agreed on a future visit of business representatives to our city with the support of the Swiss Embassy," said Serhii Morhunov.

As part of the working visit, Sergiy Morgunov, together with Deputy Mayor of Kherson Vitaliy Belobrov and colleagues from Germany, Poland and Italy, took part in a discussion panel on "Using International Territorial Partnerships for Restoring and Approaching the EU." The discussion focused on the need to develop partnerships and twinning relations between Ukrainian communities and European cities that can be mutually beneficial and useful for both parties.

"Vinnytsia has been actively working in this direction for a long time. Only since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we have three such cities. These are Münster, Karlsruhe, and Nancy. We are primarily interested in their expertise in infrastructure modernization, improving mobility, urbanism, and other issues," said Serhii Morhunov. "Next year, the conference on the recovery of Ukraine will be held in Italy. I expressed hope that even more Ukrainian communities, both large and small, will be able to find a European partner city. In particular, in Italy. This is especially important in times of great war and our future membership in the EU."

The conference focused on four different areas: the business dimension, the human dimension, the local and regional dimension, and the EU dimension. The participants discussed the need to create the right conditions to facilitate the return of people who have traveled abroad. To do this, communities should take care of decent working and living conditions. The Ukraine Recovery Conference 2024 also included Olha Remeshevska, Director of the Department for Restoration and Development at the City Council, and Mariia Levanchuk, Head of Vinnytsia's Liaison Office in Brussels.

Olha Remeshevska said that the discussion panels raised the issue of advanced training of our specialists at European enterprises.

"This is a necessary tool to share experiences and adopt best practices and implement them in Ukraine. We also discussed with our European business colleagues the possibility of opening branches in Ukrainian communities, which would create new jobs for Ukrainians and significantly enhance the economic potential of our country. Such approaches are extremely important for us now, during the war, and will be of great importance during Ukraine's recovery," Olha Remeshevska is convinced.