Досвід країн ЄС у державному регулюванні людського розвитку: імплікації для повоєнного відновлення України, The EU Countries’ Experience in State Regulation of Human Development: Implications for the Post-War Recovery of Ukraine

<jats:p>Ukraine’s post-war recovery critically depends on human capital, yet the European Union’s experience in the state regulation of human development remains fragmented and unsystematized regarding its applicability to a reconstructing country. The article aims to systematize the instruments and mechanisms of state regulation of human development across EU countries and to assess their applicability to Ukraine’s post-war recovery. A conceptual-analytical policy review was adopted – a structured narrative synthesis of peer-reviewed literature. The study hypothesizes that the toolkit’s applicability is not a property of individual instruments but a conditional, sequenced configuration in which institutional absorptive capacity is the binding precondition. A corpus of 33 sources was grouped into four thematic clusters; a uniform set of parameters was extracted from each; six axes of tension were derived; and the instruments were classified by mechanism of action and level of application. Six instrument types and three cross-cutting interaction mechanisms were systematized. It was established that institutional absorptive capacity is the meta-condition for the remaining levers’ effectiveness. The applicability of each type to Ukraine was assessed against documented conditions. A summary matrix “country/instrument → mechanism → applicability” was developed, and sequenced reconstruction-policy implications were formulated. The study integrates the previously separate social-investment, educational, digital, and resilience strands into one framework. An ordered reconstruction toolkit is proposed, prioritizing institutional capacity, the digital advantage, and the educational-fiscal core. The novelty is an applicability matrix of instruments for a post-war recovery country, previously absent from the literature. As the assessments are an analytical extrapolation, future work involves empirical validation on Ukrainian data and a conflict-specific research line. The paper is theoretical.</jats:p>