From pilot testing to whole-city transformation for climate neutrality.

48 cities have been selected to join the Enabling City Transformation Programme that goes beyond the Pilot Cities Programme to drive large-scale innovative actions

With a budget of 22.6 million Euros under Horizon Europe, selected Mission Cities will explore the creation of innovation enabling conditions designed to benefit cities across Europe.

Multi-City Activities

FRANCE

Marseille, Grenoble Alpes, Paris, Lyon, Dijon

JET Cities- Boosting Green Workforce in Cities

FRANCE & FINLAND

Nantes & Turku

Intact (From the triangle of INaction To the wheel of ACTion)

GREECE

Ioannina & Kozani

Metronome: Design, Μ&Ε,City-Transformative Intelligence

HUNGARY, ROMANIA, SLOVENIA

Pécs, Cluj-Napoca, Velenje

ZERO-MOVE – Zero Emission Mobility Initiatives

ITALY

Prato, Rome, Parma & Bergamo

NZD: Sustainable Districts in Climate Change Scenario

NORWAY

Stavanger & Trondheim

Empowered Governance

NORWAY, GERMANY, SLOVAKIA

Oslo, Aachen & Košice

GRIP (Green Responsible Innovative Procurement)

PORTUGAL

Guimarães, Lisbon & Porto

A+CLASS – Alliance for Climate Leadership

SPAIN

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Zaragoza, Madrid, Valladolid, Seville, Valencia

Enabling Massive Change for Climate-Neutral Cities

SWEDEN

Helsingborg & Umeå

HYDROSYM-2030

Individual City Activities

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

Cap4ClimB – Capacity for Climate Transition Budapest

ELBASAN, ALBANIA

Elbasan Climate-Neutral Innovation in Mobility (eCIM)

HELSINKI, FINLAND

MADLESS

KLAGENFURT AM WÖRTHERSEE

© SK_Helge Bauer

Climate Art City

KRANJ, SLOVENIA

KReATIVE

LAHTI, FINLAND

Towards Zero-Emission Urban Transport and Logistics

LAPPEENRANTA, FINLAND

© Visit Lappeenranta / CC BY-SA 4.0

HALT

LEUVEN, BELGIUM

FACT – Financing Accelerated City Transformation

LIBEREC, CZECH REPUBLIC

Building Participatory Governance Model and Capacity for Climate Action

LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA

SHIFT – Shaping Habits for Innovative Future Transformations

LUND, SWEDEN

© Wikipedia|Olena Siergieieva|2011|Lunds universitetsbibliotek

CoGovernance

MALMÖ, SWEDEN

Enabling Climate Transition Malmö

MANNHEIM, GERMANY

COLL€CT – Collectively Enabling Effective Climate Investments

MILAN, ITALY

CLIMB

REYKJAVÍK, ICELAND

Developing the Future of a Climate-Neutral City

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS

HK-ACT (Haags KlimaatAkkoord: Collaborative Transformation)

ENABLING CITY TRANSFORMATION

This eighteen-month programme aims to foster large-scale, city-wide transformation, building upon and progressing beyond the Pilot Cities Programme.

CALL DOCUMENTS

Call Guidelines

Application Templates

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Eligibility

Yes – as long as that entity is not formally a/the Mission City administration, they can, as separate from the city, participate in another proposal. It is only the city administration proper that cannot be in more than one proposal.

No  – funding may not flow to non-Mission City administrations in this programme. Of course, they may participate in projects as collaborators/third parties in-kind, but they cannot be formally part of the grant.
There is a slight nuance with other levels of governance linked to a Mission City – for example, a Metropole (higher order) or district (lower order) that is formally linked to the Mission City – they can participate, and receive funding.

It depends on the implementation challenge you are looking to overcome and the opportunity that you foresee in testing/intervening to learn: what makes most sense in terms of limited or wider scope intervention to serve the needs of both the challenge and opportunity?

The compliance criterion is as it was with the PCP – so this is only that no one partner can have MORE than 2/3 of the total budget allocated to them; so, yes, smaller organisations can have smaller budgets, the limit is rather at the other level: no one partner should hold over two-thirds!
– “The requested subgrant allocation per legal entity not being more than two-thirds of the total subgrant requested.”

No, it is not an eligibility criteria. The only mandatory partner in the consortium is a Mission City as the lead applicant, and there should be at least 2 legal entities forming a consortium.
Collaborations with research institutes and universities is always encouraged, provided it makes sense for the work you are planning to implement. Many universities are currently participating in the Pilot Cities Programme.

Term “from the city” relates to independence, not the localisation. Although partners should have a connection to the local work, as the projects are local based, this is not an eligibility criteria. Independence from the city from a legal perspective (if a city can completely control an entity, for example a division of the municipality or a municipal company 100% controlled by the city, they are not independent).

There isn’t a maximum or recommended consortium organisations number other than 2 cities in the 1M€ envelope and 3 in the 1.5M€ envelope. In this portfolio there is space for much more collaboration among cities than in Pilot Cities Programme.

Yes, non-governmental organisations are eligible to be a partner in a consortium.

Yes!

Financial

It is important to remember that in case of equipment, only the depreciation of the equipment throughout the call is eligible. So if you plan to purchase a concrete piece of equipment for 10k EUR, only its depreciation for the 2 years of the programme (if you use it for 2 years) will be eligible. This very much depends on the accounting rules of your country. Additionally, usually equipment that serves the management of the project (for example computers for the employees) either should be already in place, or purchased from indirect costs. On the other hand, if a piece of equipment serves an implementation of the task (for example a projector to a physical space created within the project), it can be covered from the direct costs (depreciation).

Programme

It depends on the implementation challenge you are looking to overcome and the opportunity that you foresee in testing/intervening to learn: what makes most sense in terms of limited or wider scope intervention to serve the needs of both the challenge and opportunity?

We recommend to register on the Mission portal as a way to connect with cities or see if cities call out for specific expertise (https://netzerocities.app/social).

There is no clear yes/no answer, as it highly depends on a concrete example. You potentially can, but it has to be in scope of the call and ensure the learning factor required by the guidelines and the commission.

Review Mechanism and Assessment Criteria

“Benefit” is not something we can give you a definitive answer on: it really does depend. Is it beneficial to the interventions you wish to experiment with /the challenge you are looking to overcome, to do this directly with collaborating cities, or alone? Only you can answer that. That said, this call has placed an emphasis on city collaboration both within and between projects, and therefore thinking about this is important for your application (and relates to at least one of the specific criteria for assessment.)
From a practical perspective, you could apply alone but establish strong synergies with another/other project(s) (perhaps including other regional cities in the Mission) rather than apply together – but please note that there is limited funding and selection may not result in projects with which you create such synergies in application being selected – your application and interventions will still need to be coherent in their own right, and so we would discourage breaking a single project down into several applications where interdependency is integral to implementation and outcomes/success. That said, there will be time spent on identifying and planning for relevant selected project synergies in the portfolio in the Boot Camp phase for this programme.

Networking, reaching out to other cities, leveraging contacts discovered during the sensemaking sessions, and participating in the Enabling City Transformation Summer Sandbox Sessions are a few of many possible options.

Reporting

The periodic reporting should provide sufficient detail to accurately reflect the current status of your Pilot Activity’s implementation. You may also upload additional documentation to support your descriptions. The report should be as detailed as necessary to accurately represent the work completed, any changes made, and expectations for the upcoming year.

Overall, the budget is flexible between cost categories, with the exception of shifts involving subcontracting, as these do not generate the same direct costs. Any changes involving subcontracting require an amendment. Otherwise, budget adjustments between categories are anticipated and allowed.

Reporting on the Twinning Learning Programme should align with the budget allocated for twinning within your programme.

We do not collect consortium contracts as part of reporting or at any other point in the programme. You are free to use whatever agreement you find most suitable. However, we recommend using the DESCA Model.

Indeed, we confirm that PCP is using the daily rate approach for personnel cost calculation for all PCP cohorts, including cohort 1. This is the only rule that has been taken from Horizon Europe. The reporting period runs from 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2024. During this period, you need to calculate the prorated rates for both 2023 and 2024 based on the actual working days reported in your time record system.

The calculation will involve:

  • Determining the rates for 2023 and 2024.
  • Applying these rates to the actual working days reported from June 2023 to December 2023 and from January 2024 to the end of May 2024.

You should use working days, but there is a helpful guideline in the financial guidelines to help convert hours to days. What if your time record management system is set up on an hourly basis? To calculate “Day-equivalent,” there are three conversion methods:

  1. A conversion based on the average number of hours that the person must work per working day according to their contract.
    Example: If the contract states that the person must work 37.5 hours per week distributed over 5 working days, a day equivalent for the person is 7.5 hours (37.5 ÷ 5).
  2. A conversion based on the usual standard annual productive hours of the beneficiary, if it is at least 90% of the workable time.
    Example:
    Standard annual productive hours of the beneficiary = 1,600
    Standard annual workable hours of the beneficiary = 1,720
    1,720 × 90% = 1,548 < 1,600
    1,600 ÷ 215 = 7.44 hours = 1 day-equivalent
  3. A conversion based on a fixed number of hours (e.g. for Partners with no reference in their contracts of standard weekly nor annual hours).
    Example: 1 day-equivalent = 8 hours trackable via hours-based timesheet.

All completed categories in the impact framework are mandatory. Last year, pilots were required to select at least one or two greenhouse gas (GHG) indicators, which is a key reporting requirement. The co-benefits and various sub-domains mentioned in the approval are optional, offering numerous choices.

There is a section for customised indicators that you can tailor to meet your specific needs.

Yes, you can change your indicators at this stage. Your learnings from the programme can and should be reflected in your updated indicators.

Yes, GHG indicators are required. At least one is necessary.

Complaints and Appeal Policy

If you have a complaint or would like to appeal the decision made about your application to the Enabling City Transformation, please click here for our Complaints and Appeal Policy.

If you have questions, you can reach out to us via email!