EUREKA

Cities take up 4% of the EU's land area, but are home to 75% of the EU population and consume up to 80% of energy. In addition, cities are vulnerable to and face growing difficulties in dealing with the effects of climate change. The EU is leading the global fight against climate change and has made it one of its top priorities. The EU Climate Law as a key component of the EU Green Deal enshrines the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 into law.
In this context, cities and regions have a key role to play. Many of them are already taking action to address environmental challenges and create more livable and resilient urban environments and committing to climate neutrality by 2030 through the EU Mission "100 Climate Neutral & Smart Cities".
The overall objective of the project is to generate a policy change in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of urban and regional policies related to climate neutrality. The project will help well-prepared cities and regions and those striving to build a holistic approach towards climate neutrality to share their knowledge and expertise through interregional policy learning and capacity building activities, allowing for the identification of successful practices that have been implemented in different contexts and enabling cities and regions to adapt and apply them to their own specific situations. The policy learning within the project will be focused on four main dimensions:
- governance of the transition for more transparent, inclusive, responsive, and effective decision-making.
- cross-sectoral approaches to ensure coherence of policy making objectives across different policy areas.
- better funding through the combination of multiple funding sources, earmarked to different yet complementary objectives.
- building coherent and effective monitoring frameworks, allowing to reliably and effectively measure the effects and impact of climate neutrality policies and plans.