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15.12.2025
Cities4Cities and the Romanian Association of City Managers have signed a memorandum on cooperation
During the international conference “Rebuilding Ukraine: Security, Opportunities, Investment“, held on 11–12 December 2025 in Bucharest, the Cities4Cities initiative signed a memorandum on cooperation with the Association of Public Administrators of Romania (Asociația Administratorilor Publici din România).
The agreement was signed by Svitlana Blinova, coordinator of the Cities4Cities initiative, and Marin Florea, president of the Association of Public Administrators of Romania.
This memorandum is about the practical level of cooperation between Ukrainian communities and Romanian municipalities, where practical knowledge, experience and professional teams play a key role.
This is particularly important in the context of Ukraine’s future participation in European funding programmes. At the beginning of its EU membership, Romania lost billions of euros due to a lack of procedures, capacity to work with public procurement, trained teams and project management experience at the local level.
“In my community, we had approved funding from EU funds — the money was in the account. But we were unable to use them. There was not enough knowledge, projects, or procedures. And these funds had to be returned. It was painful. We don’t want Ukrainian municipalities to go through the same thing,” said Marin Florea.
The partners agreed to cooperate in four key areas: organising study visits and internships, developing the professional competencies of municipal teams, joint preparation for participation in European programmes and grants, as well as exchange of experience in the field of digitalisation, logistics, public services and management.
“This is a logical continuation of the need for experience, and Romanian cities, at the expert level, will share their experience with Ukrainian cities. We are already thinking about study visits — internships in Romania, online courses and live training sessions. This is valuable both for European integration and for participation in EU programmes,” added Svitlana Blinova, Cities4Cities coordinator.