The C4T Community of Practice is a community-based platform that aim to support
EU Member States and regions
to make a better use of EU funds for
sustainability transitions.
C4T engages national, regional, and local cohesion and sustainability transitions practitioners in sharing experience and good practices, creating partnerships and jointly identifying solutions. C4T also provides technical assistance to facilitate the development and/or implementation of sustainability transitions.
C4T covers all EU regions across Europe. It brings together beneficiaries involved in the implementation of transition measures with support from cohesion policy under Policy Objective 2 ‘A greener, low-carbon transition towards a net zero carbon economy and resilient Europe’. This includes managing authorities of
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Cohesion Fund (CF) programmes, regional and local authorities, implementing authorities and other public bodies in the areas of environment, energy, and climate, as well as other relevant stakeholders involved in the implementation of cohesion policy.
There is an urgent need to act in delivering the climate neutral and circular economy ambition set by the European Green Deal. Member States and regions are
not only faced with the existential threat posed by climate change, but also challenges posed by disruptions generated by global events such as the recent economic and energy crise. Ensuring the effective use of EU funds to support sustainability transitions is fundamental for enhancing the resilience and preparedness of Member States and regions and for making the European Green Deal a reality for EU citizens.
Cohesion policy and EU funds have, for many years, been the engine of structural changes in European regions. For the 2021-2027 programming period, the European Commission has channelled close to EUR 400 billion to cohesion delivered through several funds (ERDF, CF, ESF+, JTF).
The status of implementation of Policy Objective 2 is shown below.
C4T GROUNDWORK offers technical assistance to enable
EU Member States and regions to effectively implement sustainability transitions with funding from ERDF and CF. Tailored technical assistance will be provided to selected beneficiaries by technical experts appointed by the European Commission and C4T Secretariat.
The target groups for technical assistance are public authorities, such as
C4T GROUNDWORK covers a wide range of thematic areas under Policy Objective 2 “A greener, low-carbon transitioning towards a net zero carbon economy and resilient Europe” under the ERDF and/or CF programmes, including:
The technical assistance is announced through Calls for Applications. To learn more about the assistance and the application process, see the C4T GROUNDWORK Guidelines.
If you are interested in receiving technical assistance, please fill in the application form . Application deadline for the current round is 8th March 2024 at 23:59 CET.
The C4T Working Groups on Energy, Climate Change and Environment offer a forum for exchange of good practices and knowledge related to the successful implementation of sustainability transitions investments with support from Cohesion Policy. They provide a space for stakeholders to meet twice a year and discuss bottlenecks to the implementation of investments on energy, climate change and environment.
The Working Groups are composed of Managing Authorities, intermediate bodies, regional, local, and other public authorities, Member State authorities and other relevant stakeholders that are involved in the implementation of ERDF and CF investments focused on sustainability transitions. A list of the current Working Groups for each of the C4T Working Groups can be found here.
The compilation of the Working Groups’ discussions on challenges, bottlenecks, and solutions they’ve experienced in the implementation of these investments since they were launched in Spring 2023, are the production of a compendium of good practices. This compendium will gather existing knowledge from Working Group members and good practices from the C4T Community of Practices related to overcoming bottlenecks in the implementation of the European Green Deal through Cohesion Policy investments, including issues related to the fulfilment of the related thematic enabling conditions.
We are still looking for additional good practices to be included in this compendium. If you have a good practice to share, we encourage you to share it with us by filling in this short survey here.
The Climate Change Working Group is focusing their work on the common priority areas of engagement and compensation of (green and rural) communities and the geography of discontent, and Do No Significant Harm and climate proofing in the context of infrastructure (e.g. cleaning rivers, prevention of fires, etc.)
For the Energy Working Group, the priority topics the group is focusing on include the social impact of the energy crisis and transition, further uptake of production of consumption of renewable energy in areas with lower potential, energy storage solutions, flexibility in the definition of green hydrogen, and the complexity of bioenergy
The Environment Working Group identified the following as priority topics to focus on: biodiversity and nature-based solutions, including environmental practices for protecting cities and settlements (adaptation), water management, circularly economy and waste, and tackling local pollution.
In addition to the thematic priorities, the Working Groups regularly join together to discuss cross-cutting topics that range from compliance of Do No Significant Harm principle, green public procurement, monitoring investments and projects, tackling the administration and human capacity in public administration, and more.
If you are interested in joining the C4T Working Groups, please apply here or contact the C4T Secretariat at secretariat@cohesion4transitions.eu.
The Academic Sounding Board is a scientific forum that provides advice on sustainability transitions to the C4T Community of Practice and the Just Transition Platform.
It will support the advancement of knowledge related to cohesion for transitions by providing advice for the development of analytical work that is focused on cohesion policy as an enabler of sustainability transitions.
Moreover, the board is an important link to the academic community. Science plays a crucial role in making state-of-the-art analytical and academic thinking available.
It provides actionable knowledge to Managing Authorities and other public bodies involved in the implementation of funds through research at the intersection of cohesion policy and sustainability transitions.
The Academic Sounding Board is composed of the following distinguished academics:
Benigna Boza-Kiss is Researcher at IIASA, working on low-energy-demand scenarios, technology-behaviour-policy dynamics in sustainable development and climate change. She is Coordinator of the global Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations (EDITS) network.
Professor Dr Eduardo Medeiros is Geography Professor and Integrated Research Fellow at DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, Iscte, Portugal. He has a Ph.D. in Geography - Regional and Urban Planning. His research interests are focused on assessing territorial impacts of EU Cohesion Policy.
Professor Dr Erik Andersson at University of Helsinki is an expert in sustainability science, ecosystem service assessments and green infrastructure planning. His interests range from sustainable urbanization and biodiversity conservation to collective governance arrangements and human-nature relationships.
Dr Florian Kern is an internationally recognised expert on policies to support sustainability transitions. He heads the research group ‘Ecological Economics and Environmental Policy’ at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research, based in Berlin, Germany.
Professor Dr Lars Coenen is known for his theoretical and empirical work on regional and urban innovation and pioneering research on the geography of sustainability transitions. He is associate editor of the leading journal in transition studies, EIST. He is Professor at the Mohn Centre for Innovation and Regional Development, HVL, Norway.
Professor Dr László Pintér is Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at the Central European University (CEU) and Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), interested in systems-based understanding of un/sustainability challenges.
Dr Lefteris Topaloglou is Associate Professor at the University of Western Macedonia and Director of the Institute of Energy Development and Transition to Post-Lignite Era. His research interests relate to energy policy transition and spatial justice.
Dr hab. Małgorzata Dziembała is Associate Professor and head of the Department of International Economic Relations, University of Economics in Katowice. Her research focuses on European economic integration, EU regional policy, competitiveness and international cooperation of the regions, and innovation policy.
Dr Mariya Trifonova is Chief Assistant Professor at Sofia University's Faculty of Economics with 12+ years of experience in renewable energy, specializing in participatory processes for transitioning coal regions in Bulgaria and modelling decarbonization pathways.
Dr Paula Kivimaa is Research Professor in Climate Change and Societal Transitions at the Finnish Environment Institute SYKE. She is also a member of the Finnish Climate Change Panel and Associate at SPRU, University of Sussex.
Professor Dr Stefan Greiving is Head of the Institute of Spatial Planning at the TU Dortmund University, Germany. His main areas of expertise are spatial planning, disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change.
Access our repository of useful knowledge and resources relating to and drafted by the C4T Community of Practice.
