The basis of European integration is a new regulatory system without bureaucracy – Metinvest CEO

Metinvest CEO calls for a deep restructuring of Ukraine's infrastructure and business environment

Ukraine’s top priorities on its way to the EU include rebuilding physical infrastructure, rethinking regulatory policy, especially in natural monopolies, involving international financial institutions in rebuilding the country, and applying innovations. This was stated by Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Group, during the business summit “EU-Ukraine: On the Road to URC2025” business summit held on April 10-11 in Brussels.

The event brought together over 500 participants from the financial, infrastructure, energy and transportation sectors. It was attended by representatives of the European Commission, the Ukrainian government, the European Investment Bank and the Polish Development Bank.

According to the CEO of Metinvest, the company expects the country to start recovering and plans to participate in it, including in infrastructure projects.

“Infrastructure is at the heart of it, because everything starts with it. And the most important thing is not just to restore the infrastructure, but to make it better and more modern,” Ryzhenkov emphasized.

He emphasized that the regulatory environment needs to be restructured, as businesses need predictability and transparency, without bureaucracy and with new transparent regulation where it is needed.

The Metinvest CEO also emphasized the importance of the presence of international financial institutions.

“When such institutions enter a country, they create a certain vote of confidence that encourages other financial institutions to follow the same path. And this is great when it comes to government or public projects. At the same time, we would like to see how these mechanisms will work for small and medium-sized businesses, and possibly for large ones as part of joint projects. This will undoubtedly help speed up the process even in the current environment,” added the CEO of Metinvest.

Ryzhenkov also spoke about the introduction of innovations within the Steel Dream initiative, a project to build housing and infrastructure from steel. According to him, artificial intelligence is already being used both for designing houses and in production.

“That is, AI is already in Ukraine. It is already part of the recovery process. And I’m almost sure that other companies in Ukraine are also engaged in similar projects,” he summarized.

As GMK Center reported earlier, Metinvest believes that the recovery of the Ukrainian steel industry, which was destroyed by the war, directly depends on international security guarantees. The company will not be able to implement large-scale investment projects without reliable conditions for long-term planning.