‘Here to stay’: As NEB picks up pace, private funding is needed to scale

“If citizens perceive that New European Bauhaus ... is improving their quality of life, they will ask the private market to produce with New European Bauhaus criteria,” MEP Marcos Ros Sempere said at a panel discussion during the Festival. This “NEB added value” would show that a project promotes the movement’s values of sustainability, beauty and inclusiveness.  

“It’s a question of creating synergies between public authorities and the private sector,” added Ros Sempere, the rapporteur of a 2022 European Parliament report on the NEB.  

“We need the private sector to develop a real strategy on New European Bauhaus across our urban landscape.” 

Wellbeing 

The scale-up of NEB principles to improve Europe’s built environment is critical for people’s wellbeing, according to Professor Enrico Giovannini, former Italian Minister of Infrastructure and Mobility. 

"The built environment is particularly important for people's well-being,” not only because we spend a lot of our life in houses, he said, "but also because we have now a lot of studies that show the relationships between the quality of the built environment and sustainability and wellbeing." 

Effective scale-up of the NEB requires transparency, said architect Kika Zdziarska, who is researching the socio-economic and environmental sustainability potential of building components developed from underused wood. 

The NEB initiative encourages the redevelopment of Europe’s heritage buildings, to also provide affordable housing and strengthen communities’ identities, bringing together input from across business, society and government. 

“NEB should be very demanding about sustainability, inclusion and quality of experience,” she said. “And for that to happen, I think it really needs transparent decision-making and process accountability.” 

Since it was launched in 2020, the NEB has mobilised almost €1.4 billion in funding. The sustainable, community-led building practices that the NEB has helped to take from design to implementation are now ready to be rolled out, offering opportunities for investors and innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 

“You can scale the NEB, but in the end, it needs to come from the private market,” added Dirk Paelinck, founder and chairman of the European PropTech Association, an organisation which aims to spur innovation in the property sector. 

“We must encourage private investment in sustainable construction and private resources for large-scale projects,” said Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Cohesion & Reforms. “The New European Bauhaus is here to stay.” 

Crowdfunding in Ukraine 

In Ukraine, a building which has been supported by individual donations offers a blueprint for how the country can be rebuilt following Russia’s full-scale invasion. It also represents a different approach to unlocking private investment. The Promprylad innovation centre, a winner of the 2025 New European Bauhaus Champions award, saw a former Soviet factory transformed into a hub for office spaces, a school and coffee shops with the support of crowdfunded donations.

“For us, this is a ready-to-use blueprint for the whole Ukraine,” said Oksana Arkhypchuk, head of training platform Promtech, a project taking place at Promprylad. “Over 1,800 co-investors came to create this space from Ukraine and from all over the globe. 

“I truly believe this is a unique model of equity crowdfunding and fundraising and people who are becoming co-owners of the change.”