The civil society sector remains committed to monitoring recovery expenditures, with 60 per cent of Chatham House respondents asserting that the primary value of civil society is to act as a ‘watchdog’ (see Annex, Q20). However, the commitment to civic oversight has seen a marked decline, dropping from 68 per cent in 2022 to 60 per cent in 2026. This trend likely reflects the severe funding shocks following the 2025 suspension of USAID assistance, which forced many organizations to scale back monitoring activities and lay off specialized staff.
Despite these constraints, several civil society initiatives continue to bridge the oversight gap and engage local groups. For example, the Fiscal Policy Research Centre monitors direct expenditure, including those from the European Investment Bank and the Fund for the Elimination of Consequences of Armed Aggression. Meanwhile, the Big Recovery Project (BRP) is Ukraine’s largest civic monitoring initiative. BRP focuses on public investment at the community level (specifically schools, hospitals and residential repairs) by leveraging data from the Prozorro digital public procurement platform and E-data public finance portals.
The primary obstacle to more effective oversight remains the lack of granular data at the local level about funded recovery projects. While the DREAM platform serves as a centralized hub for managing, monitoring and coordinating all recovery projects, it does not display projects that have already secured funding. Furthermore, the Ukrainian finance ministry does not provide real-time updates to DREAM on financial transactions related to projects approved for funding. Similarly, the ministry publishes the list of public investments approved for 2026 with the national implementing agencies, but it is not clear to which communities these resources will be allocated. For example, the State Fund of Regional Development lists 2 million UAH in the public investment portfolio, but lacks information as to what is funded.
Meanwhile, of the UAH 256 billion allocated for public investment in 2025, approximately UAH 187 billion was sourced from foreign donors, yet tracing these funds to local outcomes remains a significant challenge for independent monitors.
Consultation on individual projects is improving, but more needs to be done at the strategic level
The most significant evolution in Ukraine’s recovery delivery is the introduction of the Public Investment Management (PIM) framework. Launched in 2025, this system streamlines national and local planning by creating a single project pipeline and ensuring individual recovery projects are directly linked to broader community development strategies and national sectoral strategies.
The PIM framework aggregates the recovery pipeline within the DREAM ecosystem, aiming for a ‘single window’ for all investment activity in Ukraine. As of early 2026, the DREAM portal carries an extensive portfolio of projects worth a total of UAH 6.4 trillion. However, a significant gap remains between planning and execution: only UAH 134.6 billion ($3 billion) has been approved by the Strategic Investment Council for the Single Project Pipeline, making it eligible for state budget financing.
The perception of DREAM as a civic engagement tool has shown modest improvement in the Chatham House survey. In 2026, 15 per cent of regional CSOs and 14 per cent of Kyiv-based groups rated the platform as ‘effective’, up from 11 per cent and 10 per cent respectively in 2024 (see Annex, Q14). This improvement in perception is partly due to the fact that each project on DREAM has to describe how wider constituencies have been consulted or what is planned for the future. This requirement forces local officials to think more about engagement, but leaves room for them to either avoid the process or conduct it in a limited way. They are often brought in during the final stages of a project to validate decisions already made, rather than being consulted during the initial assessment and planning phases.
The DREAM system so far remains incomplete as it fails to promote the inclusion of civil society in the process. Although a recent government resolution established the procedures for evaluating and implementing public investments, DREAM lacks specific requirements for public consultations and community-level engagement during the project preparation phase. The DREAM operational team is aware of this gap and is planning to develop additional functionality in reference to community engagement in 2027–28.
While the reform is an overall positive, Ukraine is currently in a transitional phase of implementation, in which the strategic planning process and public investment allocations are not fully aligned. Currently, stakeholder inclusion happens only at the stage of strategic planning in the community. Such strategies tend to be approved for between five and 10 years, meaning that many of them will not be updated as part of PIM and citizens and CSOs often will not be consulted on most local investments.
Another assessment among communities shows that civic participatory practices are rarely used in PIM at the local level. Most often, the local executive shares the investment portfolio only with council members, rather than discussing it with other interested stakeholders and target groups. Similarly, the guidance for community mid-term plan of prioritized public investments only briefly states the requirement for citizens’ engagement. Best practices, guidance and good models are currently lacking.
PIM is a vital step for both managing EU pre-accession and cohesion funds and preparing Ukraine for larger capital inflows. But its ability to ensure genuine local inclusion and transparency in resource allocation remains unproven.
The appeal of European practices is increasing and likely reflects the high level of support among Ukrainians for EU membership. The European Code of Conduct on Partnerships remains popular as an approach, but is rarely applied in Ukraine: 23 per cent of our survey respondents propose it as an effective way to improve engagement at the local level – a slightly smaller proportion compared to 2025 (27 per cent) (see Annex, Q17).