The money has clocks: what is actually left in each Ukraine funding instrument, and when each one closes

The advice everyone gets

Ask any trade promotion agency, any chamber, any consultancy how a European company finances a move into Ukraine, and you will be pointed in the same direction: the EU instruments. The Ukraine Facility. The Ukraine Investment Framework. The EBRD and the EIB.

It is sensible-sounding advice, it is what the press releases describe, and it is where the largest numbers are. It is also, for a mid-sized company in September 2026, pointing at the emptiest shelf in the shop.

I have spent this month doing something narrower than the usual survey of “what funding exists for Ukraine.” I went instrument by instrument and asked two questions that the announcements never answer: how much is left, and until when. The results are not what the headline figures imply, and in two cases they are the opposite.

A note on method before the numbers. Every figure below carries the date it was published, because several of them have moved this year and at least one moved downwards while the coverage kept describing it as growing. Where a figure is an institution’s own statement reported by trade press rather than an institution’s publication, I say so.

What is already closed

Start here, because this is the part almost nobody has written down in one place.

The InvestEU Ukraine Export Credit Pilot is closed. This was the EUR 300 million facility, launched in June 2024, under which the European Investment Fund passed guarantees to national export credit agencies so that European SMEs and mid-caps could cover exports to Ukraine. It is the single instrument most precisely designed for the readership of this note. The EIF’s own page states that it is no longer accepting applications, and that the call closed on 31 May 2025 — sixteen months ago. No top-up and no extension has been announced.

There is a second thing worth knowing about it. A European Investment Bank release of 10 July 2025 named ten participating member states — Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain — and said three more were expected. The EIF’s current pages list eight as having signed. France and Germany do not appear. I cannot tell from public sources whether the EIF page lags or whether those two were announced and never signed, and that is itself a small illustration of how hard this layer is to read from outside.

The EBRD’s war-risk facility with Aon is fully utilised. The Ukraine Recovery and Reconstruction Guarantee Facility — EUR 110 million, covering inland cargo, motor own damage and railway rolling stock, fronted by Ingo, Colonnade and Uniqa — became operational in March 2025 and was fully used within about nine months, supporting roughly EUR 360 million of insured movements through capacity recycling as policies expired. Those last three figures are EBRD statements reported by Global Trade Review on 12 August 2026 rather than an EBRD publication, and I flag that because they are load-bearing.

The EBRD’s own signal on scope is worth reading carefully too: the near-term move is to broaden eligible assets to “logistics-adjacent” activities, with energy cover only “in the medium to long term.” If your assets are generation or grid, this route is not available to you and will not be soon.

Switzerland’s window shut yesterday. SECO’s third call for Swiss private investment in Ukraine closed on 20 September 2026 — CHF 50 million, projects of CHF 3–10 million, and only for Swiss companies already owning a Ukrainian entity. No fourth call has been announced. As of today there is no open Swiss window at all. Of the CHF 500 million earmarked for the private sector in Switzerland’s 2025–2028 country programme, the three calls so far account for roughly CHF 293 million — my arithmetic, not an announcement, and it mixes one committed figure with two ceilings.

The gate nobody mentions

Now the instrument everyone names.

The Ukraine Investment Framework is Pillar II of the Ukraine Facility and it is the part a company can, in principle, touch. Its envelope is EUR 9.6 billion — EUR 7.8 billion of guarantee cover plus EUR 1.8 billion of blended-finance grants. Of that, EUR 8.5 billion has been allocated, mobilising EUR 25.7 billion of investment. That figure is dated June 2026 on the Commission’s own pages and has not moved since.

So roughly EUR 1.1 billion of headroom remains, about eleven per cent. The Commission itself put it plainly in March 2026, when the allocated total stood at EUR 8.4 billion: the UIF “has already allocated EUR 8.4 billion, representing 90% of its total capacity.”

Sit with that for a moment, because it is the single most useful line in this note. A mid-sized European company considering a EUR 8 million entry into Ukraine is not near this instrument. It is not a question of competition or timing or preparation. The floor is more than six times its project. Every briefing that tells such a company to look at the Ukraine Investment Framework is giving advice that cannot be followed.

The route that does work for a company of that size runs through a partner bank, not the Commission, and the EBRD has been building exactly that. Its wartime support passed EUR 10.5 billion by 26 June 2026, and among the June announcements were risk-sharing facilities with PrivatBank (EUR 265 million), Oschadbank (EUR 150 million) and Bank Lviv (EUR 50 million) — EUR 303 million across eight Ukrainian banks, expected to unlock EUR 845 million of new credit.

The Ukraine SME Recovery Programme, launched with the EU on 5 June 2026, works the same way: frequently misreported as a EUR 135 million instrument, it is in fact EUR 46 million of EU money — EUR 41 million of guarantees plus roughly EUR 5 million of technical assistance — expected to mobilise EUR 135 million. It is delivered as first-loss cover through partner banks and is explicitly designed for transactions with limited collateral or insufficient sponsor equity.

One further EBRD item deserves attention because it is genuinely new: an Enterprise Security Enhancement mechanism offering partial debt relief where EBRD-financed assets are damaged by the war. For a company weighing a Ukrainian asset it is a different kind of protection from insurance, and it exists.

Where the headroom actually is

Against that, the national instruments. And here the picture inverts twice — once in the direction you would expect, once sharply against it.

Sweden — the correction that matters most

I had intended to write that Sweden was a good example of long-dated headroom: cover raised to 95%, corporate group limit raised to SEK 300 million, maturities extended to 2035, all effective 1 June 2025. Every one of those facts is accurate and every one of them is beside the point.

EKN’s Ukraine Facility FAQ, updated 8 September 2026, says the total guarantee facility was initially SEK 1.776 billion (approximately EUR 165 million). For the remainder of 2026, it was lowered to SEK 700 million, with about SEK 300 million — EUR 26 million — available.

Read that twice. The frame is set annually rather than as a fixed multi-year envelope; the 2026 allocation was lowered to SEK 700 million; and roughly SEK 300 million remains.

One Swedish corporate group could absorb the entire remaining national frame in a single transaction.

The 2035 date, incidentally, is the outer limit for payments falling due under a guarantee. It is not a programme end date, and reading it as one — as I nearly did — inverts the picture completely.

One condition Swedish exporters consistently underestimate: because the framework is funded from the development aid budget, the exporter must describe how the transaction aligns with Sweden’s strategy for Ukraine. That is a drafting job, and it takes time you will not have if you start when you notice the frame is nearly empty.

Denmark — the one genuinely open door

EIFO remains the most accessible instrument in Europe for this purpose. EUR 955 million, roughly DKK 7.15 billion, established March 2023. Direct loans to Ukrainian buyers. Up to 100% risk coverage of banks’ and Danish exporters’ lending. Grants covering up to 40% of the financing need for public-sector buyers. Conditions: minimum 30% Danish economic interest in the financed amount, buyer equity at three times the loan, and five years of audited accounts.

No application deadline. Applications are assessed at a Ukraine Screening Committee that meets monthly, and the expectation is a deal mature enough to close in about three months. The most recent increase I can source is DKK 500 million announced on 27 August 2025.

Alongside it, the DKK 1 billion investment guarantee for Ukraine’s defence industry is still open on a rolling basis — up to 70% of subscribed capital or share purchase price, minimum DKK 1 million, 10% ownership, maximum seven years, open to Danish-domiciled companies of any size.

If you have any route to a Danish economic interest of 30% in your transaction, that is the shortest path currently available in Europe. It is not close.

Finland — announced, not yet accessible

Finnvera’s SISU facility — up to EUR 240 million for exports to Ukraine behind a 75% European Commission guarantee, plus EUR 36.6 million of complementary Finnish MFA funding, aimed at advanced manufacturing, critical raw materials, digital, dual-use and metallurgy — was signed as a Declaration of Intent at URC Gdańsk on 25 June 2026.

Finnvera says it “will be able to start granting guarantees under the guarantee programme once the final agreement has been signed.” I can find no record of that signing, and nothing Ukraine-related in Finnvera’s releases across July, August or September 2026. So: real capacity, genuinely new, materially changing the Finnish picture — and not yet something you can apply to. If you are Finnish and planning against it, the date of that final agreement is the thing to watch.

Norway — open, and structured unusually

Norfund’s Ukraine Investment Fund: NOK 1 billion committed, “with scope for further allocations in future years.” Tickets of USD 5–50 million, ideally USD 15–25 million. Equity capped at 35% shareholding, debt at 40% of the capital structure. No end date, no deadline.

The clause that matters: the investee company may be domiciled outside Ukraine provided the funds are deployed in Ukraine. For a Nordic sponsor structuring a Ukrainian operation, that single sentence changes the holding-structure question.

Separately, Norad announced NOK 93 million in March 2026 for companies preparing Ukraine investments, in renewable energy and pharmaceutical supply, open to both Norwegian and Ukrainian companies, with individual awards between NOK 5.5 million and NOK 57 million.

The ledger

The 2027 problem

The Ukraine Facility is formally a 2024–2027 instrument. More than EUR 29.5 billion of its EUR 50 billion had been disbursed as of 26 June 2026. No extension beyond 2027 has been decided.

What the Commission has proposed is a Ukraine Reserve inside the next Multiannual Financial Framework, 2028–2034 — up to EUR 100 billion, capped at roughly EUR 14.3 billion a year, delivered as grants and guarantees. It is a proposal. Adoption is expected at the end of 2027, and no successor to the Ukraine Investment Framework is named within it.

So the shape of the next eighteen months is a current instrument running down toward a 2027 end, and a successor whose adoption is expected at roughly the same moment. Whether that is a clean handover or a gap is not knowable today, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing.

Meanwhile a great deal of new EU money did arrive in 2026. The EUR 90 billion Ukraine Support Loan covers 2026–2027; its first instalment of EUR 3.2 billion was disbursed on 25 June 2026. It splits into roughly EUR 30 billion of macro-financial and budget support and EUR 60 billion for Ukraine’s defence industrial capacity. On 30 July 2026 the Council amended the Ukraine Plan to reflect a further EUR 8.3 billion for 2026 delivered through that loan.

That is the whole shape of 2026: the money did not run out. It changed address. It moved from company-facing guarantee capacity into state-facing budget and defence support, and the company-facing pots were not refilled at the same rate.

The question that decides which route is yours

Put the instruments side by side and a pattern appears that no single announcement reveals. The EU layer is large, nearly allocated, intermediated through banks you must already have a relationship with, and gated at a size most mid-market companies cannot reach. The national layer is smaller per country, far more accessible, and open — but every national route carries a national content condition.

• EIFO wants 30% Danish economic interest.
• EKN requires alignment with Sweden’s strategy for Ukraine, and has about EUR 26 million left.
• Finnvera’s capacity points at dual-use, advanced manufacturing, critical raw materials and metallurgy.
• SECO required applicants to already own a Ukrainian entity.
• Norfund requires funds to be deployed in Ukraine but permits an investee domiciled outside it.

So the operative question is not “what funding is available for Ukraine.” It is narrower, and it is a structuring question: which national content condition can my transaction actually satisfy, and how quickly can my transaction be arranged to satisfy it?

No chamber will work that out for you — chambers represent members, not transactions. No promotion agency will tell you that its own country’s frame is nearly empty and the answer is to route through Copenhagen. The instrument owners each describe their own instrument accurately and none of them compares. And the answer changes depending on where your subsidiaries are, where your content originates, and how fast you can incorporate.

Timing matters more than the amount. SEK 300 million is a real frame, but it is one transaction wide. A Danish screening committee meets monthly and wants a deal that closes in three months. Switzerland’s next call, if it comes, will require an entity you should have registered this year. The constraint is whether you are structured in time to reach the money.

What I would take from this

If you are Danish, or can be: EIFO is open, has no deadline, covers up to 100% of the risk and meets monthly. The 30% Danish economic interest test is the thing to examine first, not last.

If you are Swedish: treat the EKN frame as scarce rather than abundant. About SEK 300 million remains for 2026, the per-group limit is the same number, and the aid-budget alignment argument takes time to draft.

If you are Finnish: SISU is not yet live. Watch for the final agreement rather than planning against the Declaration of Intent.

If your project is under EUR 50 million: stop reading about the Ukraine Investment Framework. Your route is a partner bank carrying EBRD first-loss cover, and the conversation starts at the bank.

If you need war-risk cover on cargo or vehicles: the EBRD facility is exhausted and its replacement is unsized. Plan on the Ukrainian market — ECA Ukraine’s investment cover, ARX, the Resolution 1541 premium compensation regime — rather than on a European facility arriving in time.

If you are anywhere in this at all: the current EU instrument ends in 2027 and its successor is a proposal expected to be adopted at the end of 2027. Whatever you intend to do inside this framework, the calendar is shorter than the headline numbers suggest.

And the honest caveat. These figures move. I have dated every number for that reason. The value is not in believing the ledger; it is in knowing it precisely enough to notice when a line changes. If you are relying on a specific instrument, check its page before you build a plan on it, and check it again before you sign.

What I could not verify

1. Whether France and Germany ever signed the InvestEU Ukraine Export Credit Pilot. Announced as participating in July 2025; absent from the EIF’s current list of eight.
2. The size and timing of the EBRD/Aon replacement facility. Intended since at least August 2026, unsized. Premium levels under the original were never published either.
3. Norfund’s cumulative deployment. NOK 1 billion is committed to the mandate; no cumulative figure is published, so how much remains uncommitted is not knowable from outside.
4. Whether Finnvera’s final SISU agreement has been signed. Nothing published since the June Declaration of Intent.
5. Whether SECO intends a fourth call. Roughly CHF 200 million of the private-sector envelope appears unallocated, but nothing is announced.

And a question for anyone who has been through one of these this year: how long did it actually take from first contact to a signed guarantee? The published process descriptions are all optimistic and none of them is a timeline you can plan against. I suspect the real numbers vary by a factor of three, and I would rather publish the real range than the brochure one.