Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, 29 April 2022 – Milan chosen to access European funds for the development of increasingly intelligent and sustainable cities. The list of 100 cities was announced today by the European Commission, with 377 competing cities, which will be able to participate in the "Cities Mission - 100 smart cities with zero climate impact by 2030". The project will initially benefit from funds from the European research and innovation program Horizon which makes over 360 million euros of funding available to territories to develop and implement actions and proposals that allow cities to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.   

Today, urban areas are home to 75% of the European Union's population and globally cities consume over 65% of available energy, causing over 70% of CO2 emissions. From this perspective, according to the European Community, it is essential that ecosystems of experimentation and innovation shared between cities and territories are created so that they become climate neutral by 2050.  

The European Commission's "Cities Mission" initiative will allow the 100 selected entities to launch research and innovation actions relating to clean mobility, energy efficiency and green urban planning, offering individual cities the possibility of carrying out pilot projects, developing good practices and joint initiatives that strengthen collaborations between municipal urban contexts in synergy with other EU programs aimed at promoting the development and sustainability of cities across the entire European territory.  

Milan's participation in the "Cities Mission" initiative will be able to improve the city's ability to attract private investments and further European funds as well as favoring the Lombardy capital's access to the tenders provided for by the national PNRR.

The selected entities are now invited by the European Commission to develop individual "Climate City Contracts", starting with the drafting of a global plan for climate neutrality that can be applied to all sectors such as: energy, construction, waste management, Transports. Interventions and projects which in their implementation will have to involve citizens, research institutes, the private sector and institutions in order to achieve the ambitious objective of carbon neutrality for the cities involved.