Just imagine the scale of the Mayors’ Congress in Paris for local government leaders: 1,200 French mayors are attending this conference. 20 Ukrainian communities and their mayors are participating in it thanks to cooperation between Cities4Cities initiative and NGO Stand with Ukraine.

Сities4Cities assisted the conference organizers: the Association of Mayors of France, the National Commission for Decentralized Cooperation, the French Regions, the French Departments and the NGO Stand with Ukraine, in coordinating the visit of a large Ukrainian delegation.

Thanks to cooperation with Stand with Ukraine and Île-de-France region, the partnerships Boyarka — Palaiseau, Slavutych — Francoville, Gostomel — Vélizy-Villacoublay, Kruty — Santeny, Koryukivka — Chaville have already been born.

And these days, new partnerships are being born: Chuhuiv — Château — Thierry, Opishnya – Vallauris, Verkhivtseve — Baisieux. Also, Nosivka, Sosnytsia and Tarashcha met with representatives of the Ile-de-France region and are starting to develop cooperation with communities in this region.

The most important outcomes of the two intense days in Paris:

• This year, a separate event was dedicated to the French-Ukrainian partnership
• 7 Ukrainian communities were able to visit French communities and begin negotiations on partnership with French partners.
• The Ukrainian delegation met with representatives of French businesses. This is especially important, because France plans to support the reconstruction of Ukraine at the local level through joint projects  involving communities and businesses.
• Meetings in the Senate and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to strengthen Ukrainian diplomacy and support of Ukraine during the war.

We thank the President of Stand with Ukraine Edward Mayor and other partners for our fruitful cooperation and for dozens of municipal partnerships between our countries.

Cities4Cities | United4Ukraine are partnership initiatives that joined forces in September 2022.  Cities4Cities was founded by the German city of Sindelfinden under the auspices of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The United4Ukraine initiative was launched by SALAR International and the Ukrainian city of Lviv with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Since 2024, Cities4Cities | United4Ukraine has been a part of Sweden’s reform cooperation Programme Polaris “Supporting Multilevel Governance in Ukraine”.