Urban Innovative Actions: 11 new projects will receive EU funding

The Commission and the French Regional Council of Hauts-de-France, as entrusted entity managing the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA), have finalised the evaluation of the 5^th and last call for proposals. The winning projects coming from Brussels, Ghent and Leiedal (Belgium), Sofia (Bulgaria), Halandri (Greece), Budapest (Hungary), Ferrara and Verona (Italy), Tilburg (the Netherlands), Košice (Slovakia), and Almería (Spain) will channel more than €45 million from the European Regional and Development Fund. They will experiment new ideas to foster culture and cultural heritage, improve air quality, develop the circular economy and tackle demographic change across Europe. The French Regional Council of Hauts-de-France with the support of the UIA Permanent Secretariat received 222 applications from 23 Member states. More details on the successful project proposals can be found here. These will complete the list of 75 projects selected under the Urban Innovative Actions 2014-2020, which are currently delivering on a number of new solutions to regreen our cities, make them safer, tackle urban poverty or make the most of the digital transition. 

Now that all the calls for proposals have been finalised, the Commission and the Region des Hauts-de-France will concentrate their efforts on valuing these experiences as sources of inspiration for Cohesion policy 2021-2027 through the recently adopted UIA Knowledge Management strategy. In the future, the direct support for urban authorities to innovate and to shape the cities of tomorrow will be part of the European urban initiative 2021-2027. 

The UIA Knowledge Management strategy will capture and share UIA experience to serve cities and Cohesion policy across the EU

The Knowledge Strategy aims at raising awareness of Cohesion policy stakeholders as most natural addressees of the knowledge that the UIA has to offer, i.e. cities implementing sustainable urban development strategies, Managing authorities and/or intermediate bodies in charge of programmes covering these strategies and the wider community of Cohesion policy beneficiaries at local and regional levels interested in learning from, or in replicating successful UIA experiences.

The objective is also to favour the joint programming of activities between UIA cities and key players of EU cities’ support function, i.e. stakeholders from URBACT III programme, from the Urban agenda for the EU partnerships, together with the Urban development network, in a more dynamic value chain that the European Urban initiative 2021-2027 wants to foster in the future.  All interested parties are called to get to know about the strategy, to contribute to its wide dissemination, and to join forces for its successful implementation for the benefit of cities and of Cohesion policy.