In response to key EU strategies concerning environment and climate protection, including in particular the European Green Deal (EGD), and driven by growing citizens’ awareness of climate and biodiversity issues, local and regional authorities (LRAs) across the EU are striving to achieve climate and energy transition, at the same time matching the particular needs of each region. Various EU-funded initiatives including cooperation platforms, supporting services and organisations strengthening political representation and green awareness, assist LRAs in their efforts.
The main objective of this study is to map climate and energy-related initiatives and assess their usefulness for the LRAs, as well as to provide recommendations for the LRAs on how to improve the functioning of the initiatives in order to make them more transparent, user-friendly and helpful for the LRAs. The assessment is made based mainly on interviews with the LRAs participating in various EUfunded initiatives and supplementary desk research. The interviews were conducted in the period January-March 2023 with two groups of stakeholders:
1) EU-level organisations;
2) representatives of cities’ and regions’ administrations (16 in total) which participate in multiple initiatives.
Several recommendations are drawn on the basis of our study, most of them directed to the initiatives’ coordinating bodies. These include:
• Considering synergies and coordination among various existing and planned initiatives in the design phase of each initiative set-up.
• Restricting the number of similar initiatives and ensure that these align and bring added value beyond the existing initiatives.
• Simplifying the monitoring and reporting schemes and tailor them to the LRAs’ needs and contexts such as size, administrative competencies, and level of progress in the climate, energy, and green transitions.
• Providing clear information regarding the scope of each initiative, target audience and what they can offer.
• Aligning the initiatives’ commitments with EU law, adjusting them, if necessary, to the changing requirements and new strategies.
• Providing active and tailored support for LRAs, including personal targeted support offered by initiative secretariats.
• Providing opportunities for direct funding and for practical implementation of targeted climate and energy actions.
• Ensuring flexibilities for the implementation phase of the commitments to proactively meet the emerging challenges of LRAs.
