National platforms coordinate climate action at country level by connecting cities with national governments and key stakeholders. They apply the EU Cities Mission’s tools and approaches, adapted to local context.
What do national platforms do?
- Engage all cities, not only Mission Cities, in the collective journey toward climate neutrality by 2030, aligned with the EU’s Mission of “100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030”
- Foster learning, collaboration and encounter among cities facing similar national realities.
- Support Climate City Contracts (CCC) in local languages, helping all cities to design, implement, and scale up successful actions.
- Provide coordinated assistance to cities, addressing to emerging needs in close collaboration with NetZeroCities.
How do national platforms work?
Creating a national platform means building trust, shared ambition, and long-term collaboration within and across government levels – local, regional, and national – as well as across sectors.
A dedicated, neutral facilitation team ensures coordination and foster alignment among stakeholders, turning multi-level governance into real progress.
A growing community
Spain
Portugal
Greece and Cyprus
The Netherlands
The Netherlands
Finland
Turkey
Romania
Austria
Sweden
Some platforms have been actively working prior to the launch of the EU Cities Mission and have a history of collaboration like Viable Cities in Sweden, CitiES2030 in Spain, and the National Mission for Climate-Neutral Cities in Austria. Since then, they were joined by M100 platform in Romania, Cidades pelo Clima in Portugal, Innocities in Finland, İNŞA in Turkey and the Dutch network of cities.
Each of them represents a different model of a national platform, tailored to its country’s context and demonstrating the importance of developing such ecosystems to drive systemic change.
The EU Cities Mission in support
Two major initiatives under the Eu Cities Mission strengthen these national ecosystems and offer complementary forms of support:
CapaCITIES supports national and regional public authorities to drive change through improving the multi-level governance and ecosystem development in their countries. The project maps, inspires and empowers initiatives across Europe to advance the work in building strong governance and enabling conditions – such as regulatory frameworks alignment – for cities to reach climate neutrality.
NetZeroCities, managing the EU Cities Mission platform, provides support including technical assistance, finance and investment advisory, peer-to-peer learning, development of collaborative actions, and collective learning sessions.
Additionally, both projects work in coordination with the EU Covenant of Mayors, which also contributes by aligning local and regional efforts under shared climate goals, promoting tailored Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs).
Accelerating just transitions
As cities accelerate climate action, integrating a just transition approach is crucial to ensure social impacts, especially on vulnerable groups, are not overlooked. Understanding how a just transition can take place requires focused, tailored spaces to explore context-specific conditions.
For example, the Swedish and Spanish national platforms piloted short-format sessions, with a practical orientation, and tailored to the contexts and entry points of their participants.
(Source: Accelerating Cities Just Transitions: Insights for Cities and National Platforms© 2024 by Atelier itd, Dark Matter Labs, Viable Cities, Climate KIC is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International CC BY 4.0)
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