AER would like to raise the awareness of member regions and partners on the launch of the 1st call for proposals of the Urban Innovative Actions Initiative, which is open from 15 December 2015 to 31 March 2016 at 02:00pm CET.
Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) is an Initiative of the European Commission that provides urban areas throughout Europe with resources to test new and unproven solutions to address urban challenges and see how these work in practice and respond to the complexity of real life.
Approximately 359 million people – 72% of the total EU population – live in cities, towns and suburbs. Urban areas face multiple and interconnected challenges related to employment, migration, demography, water and soil pollution. But, they are also engines of new ideas and solutions, dynamic places where changes happen on a larger scale and at a fast pace.
To answer the increasingly complex challenges they face, urban authorities need to go beyond traditional policies and services, they need to be innovative. UIA offers them with the possibility to take a risk and experiment creative solutions, involving also all the key stakeholders that can bring expertise and knowledge on the specific policy issue to be addressed.
UIA can provide you with two levels of support:
- providing funding for projects (it co-finances 80% of project’s activities, up to EUR 5 million ERDF)
- capturing and sharing the knowledge generate by projects, to see how potential solutions work in practice
The main objective of the 1st Call for Proposals is to select projects testing bold and unproven ideas on the following topics:
- Energy transition
- Integration of migrants and refugees
- Jobs and skills in the local economy
- Urban poverty with a focus on deprived neighbourhoods
UIA funds projects that are innovative, of good quality, participative, measurable and transferable.
The Application Pack as well as more information on the 1st UIA Call for Proposals are available here.
