Ukraine, war reconstruction. France and Germany in pole position, Italy behind

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Reconstruction during the war. To explain this oxymoron we need all the diplomatic skill of those who have already been working for months, first in silence, now with ever more visible forms, on the architrave of the reconstruction process in Ukraine while concrete signs of a positive conclusion of the conflict for Kiev, whether it is for the defeat of Russia, or for the success of a negotiation, are still non-existent.

Germany and France once again moved first, with their bilateral conferences in October and December respectively. Macron, in particular, has mobilized 700 companies and promised a robust package of state guarantees. In the meantime, the G7 has launched the Donor Coordination Platform and after the first Ukraine Recovery Conference, which took place last July in Lugano, another multilateral meeting will be held in London in June.

Italy will try to fit into a still very jagged scheme with its bilateral conference, scheduled for April 26 at the Farnesina. We arrive after Paris and Berlin, but also compared to companies from countries closer to Ukraine, such as Poland and Denmark, we probably have to recover from an initial disadvantage. In general, and it obviously applies to everyone and not just Italy, the prospect of embarking on reconstruction projects while the house is still burning involves objective risk margins, when, for example, it is not yet understood what role the donor platform will play , that is, if he will only have to coordinate the aid or even manage its distribution in contracts (on the model of the reconstruction in Iraq), with what rules the tenders will be banned, what use can be made of the frozen Russian funds. Not to mention the complicated puzzle of spheres of influence, which should coincide with those of donation, and which in Lugano saw Donetsk assigned to Italy as the first hypothesis, where there is still fighting.

The two phases

European diplomats are imagining a multi-stage commitment. The first is that of fast recovery, i.e., in the areas that left the Russian occupation, the restoration of critical civilian and energy infrastructures destroyed by the offensive, for which the World Bank calculates a need of 14 billion dollars out of a total of 411 billion for reconstruction (the Ukrainian government in Lugano estimated 750 billion). The second, more long-term and with at least a ten-year horizon, concerns the modernization of large infrastructures, but also of the regulatory and market system of the economy, to simultaneously promote the process of Ukraine’s accession to the EU. Intervention to be started in the western part not affected by the offensive and in the areas that are gradually regained from the Russians.

The Conference of 26 April

A little less than a month away, the program of the Italian Bilateral is still to be defined in detail, just as the registrations of companies are still open. And this requires an acceleration so that the event does not disappoint expectations. For the Italian government there will be ministers Antonio Tajani (Foreign Affairs), Adolfo Urso (Businesses and made in Italy) and Giancarlo Giorgetti (Economy) and in closing the intervention of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is expected. For Ukraine there will be no president Volodymyr Zelensky but at the moment the program includes the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, the foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, and the economic ministers most involved in the reconstruction dossier. The European Commission should be represented by a Commissioner. The intervention of the president of Confindustria Carlo Bonomi is expected and international financial institutions will be involved (World Bank, IMF, EBRD, EIB) as well as the Italian pole of support for internationalization: ICE, Cdp, Sace, Simest.