The “Italy–Ukraine” Dialogue: the successes of CNAUI’s interregional partnership

Interregional partnership and community diplomacy: CNAUI’s practical results

The National Congress of Ukrainian Associations in Italy (CNAUI) is steadily building institutional bridges between Ukrainian and Italian municipalities. Our work aims to move from humanitarian response to the strategic planning of reconstruction, the European integration of local communities and cultural diplomacy.

Today we are sharing the key results of our work, which show the scale and effectiveness of CNAUI’s institutional track:

Delivering results at the URC (Ukraine Recovery Conference)

Taking part in the leading international platforms for Ukraine’s recovery is one of the priorities of our work:

• URC 2025 in Rome: under our international programme “Brotherhood Across Borders”, CNAUI successfully facilitated the signing of 6 bilateral memoranda of cooperation between Italian and Ukrainian municipalities.
• URC 2026 in Gdańsk: we built on this momentum at the end of June 2026 in Poland. On the sidelines of this year’s conference our delegation directly helped to conclude 4 new partnership agreements, including one between the Italian town of Rapino and the city of Sarny (Rivne Oblast) and another between Pescara and the city of Rivne.

The scale of the interregional track

CNAUI has become a reliable European platform for direct cooperation between cities:

• 44 bilateral agreements: to date the Congress has acted as an institutional bridge for 44 partnership agreements between local authorities of every size, from small communities (such as Petrykivka or the town of Truskavets) to major regional centres including Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Poltava.
• 6 major symposia: over the past year we organised six large specialist events across key regions of Italy: from Rome (at the Senate of the Italian Republic and the European Commission Representation) to Sicily (Trapani and Erice), Abruzzo (Silvi) and Apulia (Bari).

A platform for dialogue in Rome and the institutionalisation of experience

• First Italy–Ukraine Technical and Institutional Round Table: pursuant to the “Rome Charter 2026” and to put the European Dialogue Platform into practice, CNAUI took an important step on 1 July 2026. In Rome, in the “David Sassoli” conference hall of Europa Experience, we turned our experience into a permanent format. The event was held in close cooperation with the European Parliament Office in Italy, under the patronage of the European Commission Representation in Italy and with the participation of a representative of the Embassy of Ukraine, leading Italian academics and experts in EU project design.

We are sincerely grateful to all our partners, the mayors of Ukrainian and Italian cities, the diplomats and the volunteers who are building this shared European path with us! Stay tuned for our updates: new ambitious projects are about to be launched.