Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA) for the Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission Platform

Building on the concept developed through the Horizon 2020 Green Deal call topic LC-GD-1-2-2020: Towards climate-neutral and socially innovative cities and on the setup of a one-stop-shop platform as a first building block for the Mission Platform, to provide advisory services to cities committing to the transition towards climate neutrality, the Commission calls for a Framework Partnership Agreement to establish the necessary framework and collaboration for scaling up and implementing the concept and activities of a Mission Platform and to fully integrate this platform into the Cities Mission. Partners should possess good knowledge and expertise in European urban programmes and initiatives, urban planning, technological innovation for climate neutrality, social innovation and stakeholder engagement, knowledge valorisation and transfer, and funding and financing programmes such as Horizon Europe, EU structural funds, EIB, EBRD etc. Partners should build on the experience developed by European and international umbrella organisations and networks such as the EIT-KICs, C40, Eurocities, CIVITAS, POLIS, ENoLL, Covenant of Mayors Europe/ Global Covenant of Mayors, European Digital Innovation Hubs, ICLEI etc.

The partners will be responsible for defining and enabling the framework conditions that will allow for the development of a fully-fledged Mission Platform that will be focused on delivering the Mission objective of achieving 100 climate neutral cities by 2030 and ensuring that these cities will act as innovation hubs for other European cities to follow, thus accelerating the transition to climate neutrality at city level. The Mission Platform will provide tailor-made services and targeted support for the cities participating in the Mission. It will also offer web-based assistance to European cities that are not yet ready to commit to climate neutrality by 2030, but are ready to commit to accelerate their transition in line with the Cities Mission principles.

Partners should develop a draft action plan to broadly address the main building blocks on which the FPA will operate, in particular: 1) Development, up-scaling of the concept of a Mission Platform and plan for the implementation of its associated services; 2) Co-creation of Climate City Contracts for the cities participating in the Mission; 3) Assistance and preparation of tailor-made investment plans, project preparation and finance for the cities participating in the Mission; 4) Launch and management of calls for large scale EU R&I demonstrators accelerating city climate-neutrality solutions.

The partnership will fulfil the following objectives:

• to fully develop and scale up the concept of a Mission Platform as the main delivery mechanism of the Cities Mission, through a demand-driven approach catering for the needs of up to 150 cities, providing tailored assistance and services through technical, regulatory, financial and socio-economic expertise as well as support to cities for developing and implementing their CCC including related investment plans, drawing where appropriate on existing tools and resources developed by the Commission, and ensuring alignment with evolving European policy developments and actions;
• to coordinate the group of cities embarking in the CCC process, defining and implementing a common framework for monitoring, reporting and verification of progress;
• to further facilitate the sharing of experience, good practices and mutual learning between cities, including additional twinning opportunities, thus enabling participating cities to act as experimentation and innovation hubs for other cities to follow in view of urban climate neutrality by 2050;
• to provide web-based assistance to European cities that are not yet ready to commit to climate neutrality by 2030, but are ready to engage to accelerate their transition in accordance with the Cities Mission principles;
• to launch large-scale pilots to act as demonstrators for the deployment of R&I and other off-the-shelf solutions with potential for scale-up, moving from singular, customised pilot programmes to city-wide initiatives, also replicated in other cities, thus accelerating their capacity to deliver on climate neutrality;
• to establish cooperation and regular exchange, formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding, with the R&I projects that will be funded under the Climate-neutral and smart cities Mission Work Programme in order to identify complementarities, avoid potential overlaps with the pilots supported by the Mission Platform and ensure synergies where relevant, to the benefit of the participating cities.

To ensure a stable framework for the development of the Mission Platform, to avoid disruptions in its services and to deliver sustained support to the time-bound objective of the Cities Mission to achieve 100 climate-neutral cities by 2030, only one Framework Partnership Agreement will be established. The cooperation between the European Commission and selected partners will have a duration of five years. It will cover the period 2022-2027, until the conclusion of the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.