Lessons from the Western Balkans: For a Better Rebuilding of Post-War Ukraine

Dr. Petr Čermák ; Pavel Havlíček, MA

How can Ukraine rebuild better after war? This paper draws lessons from the Western Balkans’ experience af ter the wars in the 1990s to inform Ukraine’s post-conflict reconstruction, emphasising the need for effective coordination and accountability among domestic and international actors, decentralisation, and alignment with EU integration. It is aimed at policy-makers, development experts and civil society shaping Ukraine’s recovery strategy.

1. Strengthen cross-level and cross-sectoral coordination. Effective reconstruction requires close coordination across all levels of governance – from local to international – as well as across diverse sectors. Establishing formal mechanisms for joint planning, transparent communication and shared decision-making is essential to avoid duplication, ensure the efficient use of resources and align interventions with local priorities. Local governments should be empowered and meaningfully integrated into national recovery strategies, while civil society must be engaged as a key partner in both implementation and oversight.

2. Ensure continuous monitoring and evaluation. Post-conflict recovery must be guided by long-term sustainability, not just short-term stabilisation. This requires the development of continuous monitoring and evaluation frameworks that assess not only financial inputs and project outputs, but also broader social, economic, environmental and institutional impacts over time. Recovery programmes should incorporate clear exit strategies and prioritise building local capacities to sustain and expand progress after the reduction of international support. Regular evaluations should inform strategic adjustments and reduce long-term dependency on external aid.

3. Put communities at the centre of reconstruction. The whole process of post-war rebuilding needs to be human centric and include a strong reconciliation component in its centre. Life on the day after must continue and different communities with various past experiences must continue finding (new) ways to coexist, interact and live in one country together. This will require both complex and sensitive policies on reintegration as well as international help to invest in mental health support, potentially also requiring the engagement of professional mediators.

4. Anchor reconstruction within the wider process of EU integration. After the war atrocities have ended, the best and most sustainable way forward is to align the process of rebuilding with the EU agenda and internal reform. In practice, this requires an alignment between reconstruction, reforms and EU integration at each step and within each major investment project to avoid diverging from the long-term strategic agenda. Alongside utilising the legal competence and skilled personnel of government and central authorities in dealing with EU affairs, more investment should also be dedicated to training people at the regional and local level too, which is necessary to prepare the whole state apparatus for a future EU enlargement.

This policy paper is part of the project “Central Europe and Future EU Enlargement”. The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.