The European Commission, through U-LEAD with Europe, is organizing pilot projects for the restoration of schools in Ukraine, on the example of which it intends to find out how to ensure the return of children to school education as soon as possible and which ideas are better to implement.

This was stated by Director of the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments of the European Commission, Peter Wagner, during the seminar “Restoring access to education: dialogue on the role of Ukrainian municipalities in repair, recovery and reconstruction” held in Chernihiv, Ukrinform informs.

The representative of the European Commission noted that, in his opinion, at this stage of restoring access to education, maximum cooperation with the state is “absolutely necessary”, because the solution of major strategic issues can only begin at the national level.

“But now we are trying to organize pilot projects, in particular here, because we think it is important not to miss the moment when it will be necessary to move to a decentralized implementation,” said Peter Wagner.

He added that it is not only about crisis response, but about all elements of the European Commission's work in Ukraine, in particular in the field of decentralization, which was one of the most successful reform projects over the period after Euromaidan.

“We combine decentralization with this great need to restore education and with the enormous number of needs that have now arisen. In our opinion, there is currently a potential for this, so we say: let's use the existing structure of U-LEAD, because we already have partners working throughout the country,” said the Director of the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments of the EC.

According to him, European partners are currently trying to understand whether they will be able to quickly and successfully implement such projects that will allow children to return to education as soon as possible, as well as to find out which ideas are really better to implement.

In this context, he noted that there are elements that are much better implemented at the local or regional level, which “the state does not fully understand.”

According to Peter Wagner, he is looking forward to the moment when the schools start to be rebuilt to see at what level the various parts of these pilot projects can be organized.

“That is, for example, highways cannot be planned at the local level, but schools probably can. Therefore, we need to think about the proper relationship between the national and local levels, especially in the context of the decentralization reform, which has been activated since 2015,” said the representative of the European Commission.

He noted that European partners are also generally interested in how much online learning is needed.

"Now we understand that it is necessary, that online education plays an important role. I also look forward to the view of the military administrations, which will be different from how we imagined it before the war or how we will imagine it after the war. So there is a commitment, there is an understanding, but we also need to understand what are the most needed and most targeted ways of support,” summed up the Director of the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments of the European Commission.