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The Support for the Cities Involved, Including Rome, Milan and Turin, will be Considerable, While Different Incentives are being Evaluated for those Excluded.
In view of the European climate neutrality objective, which it is hoped to achieve in 2050, the Commission’s initiative has started to adapt the most important urban centres of the continent and make them sustainable. All the most populated cities in Europe occupy just 4% of the entire surface and host 75% of the entire population and represent, together with all other cities in the world, the source of 70% of all CO2 emissions by consuming 65% of all energy produced. Based on these data, it will be essential to concentrate a large part of the commitment, by the commissions in charge, on a more effective management of consumption in inhabited centres and gradually make them neutral from a climate point of view.
The European Commission has chosen one hundred cities on the continent to test the smart consumption and climate neutrality policies envisaged by the “City Mission” program which will serve as a guide for all future projects in view of the objectives set for 2050. The main purpose of the program will be to adapt the cities chosen for functional experimentation, to the development of greener centres, to a more effective reaction to the climate changes in progress, to a healthier soil management for the environment and consequently, to a greater protection of the quality of the food and the human health with the active collaboration with citizens in respectful cohabitation with nature and the climate. Among the missions to be completed by Europe, in the “City Mission” program also that relating to the protection of the sea environment, increasingly at risk in direct proportion to the population increase and that relating to the research against serious diseases due to pollution in all its forms.
Italy includes 9 cities in the European program for the environmental adaptation of urban centres against 377 requests to participate in the tender, coming from 27 European nations and 12 other associated states currently outside the Union. The Italian cities that will participate in the initiative are Milan, Florence, Bergamo, Parma, Bologna, Rome, Prato, Turin and Padua, while cities such as Arezzo, Battipaglia, Campobasso, Ferrara, Messina, Pavia, Salerno and many others are excluded but they could be part of a new support program currently being evaluated by the European Commission to grant different funding opportunities.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission in charge of the “Mission City” project, declared that the ecological transition is taking hold all over the world and especially in Europe thanks to initiatives like this and it will be essential to set increasingly ambitious goals with the collaboration of cities that will work together for a healthier and greener future. For the current two-year period, the funding foreseen by the program and intended for the cities involved is 360 million euros to be used to start the innovation paths required by the rules on ecological neutrality by 2030. Each project planned by the cities that will be able to take advantage of the support must include research and innovation actions in the field of clean mobility, urban and ecological planning and energy efficiency, in constant synergy with other European programmes.
The “City Mission” project will provide the cities involved with an exclusive assistance and consultancy program created by a dedicated platform, opportunities for funding and participation in new European initiatives and pilot projects, as well as a structured network of cities that will be able to share information and activities to involve the greatest number of citizens. Cities are the nerve center from which revolutionary changes start and Europe begins from them for a complete and real ecological transition.