Urban Innovative Actions, new European funds to address urban challenges

The 1st Call for Proposals of the Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) Initiative is open from 15 December 2015 to 31 March 2016. The UIA Initiative has a total ERDF budget of around EUR 372 million.

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

Each project can receive up to EUR 5 million ERDF co-financing. There is no fixed minimum size for UIA project budgets. However, small projects (i.e. below EUR 1 million ERDF requested) may have a reduced probability of being selected as they may struggle to demonstrate that the actions are of sufficient scale to produce meaningful conclusions.

Eligible authorities are any urban authority of a local administrative unit defined according to the degree of urbanization as city, town or suburb comprising at least 50 000 inhabitants and also any association or grouping of urban authorities of local administrative units, town or suburb where the total population is at least 50.000 inhabitants. This can include cross-border associations or groupings, associations or groupings in different regions and/or Member States.