4th Call for Proposals – 175 applications received

On January 31, 2019, a total of 175 applications were successfully submitted to the UIA initiative. This article provides a sneak preview of 4th Call statistics and an insight into which Member States are the most represented, the most popular topics, the type and size of urban authorities and delivery partners involved, and the size of partnerships.

Strong and renewed interest from all over the EU
The UIA initiative received applications from 23 Member States. Similar to the first three Calls for proposals, Italy and Spain clearly stand out in terms of interest shown for this Call, with almost 50% of the total number of applications coming from these two countries. France follows with the third highest number of submitted applications, with Belgium and Finland coming next, reflecting also previous participation to UIA Calls. Compared to previous years, the 2018 4th Call sees a greater participation of Central European urban authorities; notably from Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.

All four Call topics addressed
The four Call topics have seen uneven interest from applicants. Sustainable use of land, nature based solutions and Digital Transition have seen an almost even number of applications submitted, confirming they are topics of great interest for urban authorities across the EU. With 57 and 56 applications respectively (32% of the overall number of applications), they were the most popular topic of this Call for Proposals.
Urban poverty was the next most popular topic with 41 applications (23% of the total), with Urban Security (21 applications representing 13%) following last.

Some geographical trends can be noted for the different topics
Digital transition shows the wider territorial spread among applicants, with urban authorities from 16 different Member States applying for this topic. Cities from South and East Europe have shown a clear interest in working on innovative solutions to implement digital transition, with most of the proposals submitted under this topic originating in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Hungary.
In a similar fashion, the Sustainable use of land, nature based solutions topic attracted interest from urban authorities located in 14 Member States. The territorial division is quite different in this topic though, with Italian cities accounting for almost 40% of the submitted applications, and Spain, France and Belgium following next. In total, 75% of all project proposals on this topic are coming from one of these four Member States.
Urban poverty has received applications from 13 Member States. Besides Italy (11 applications in total), this topic attracted a lot of interest from Spain and France, while Poland has had 80% of its total applications under this thematic area. Romania’s and Ireland’s sole (1) project proposals will be considered under this topic as well.
Urban security territorial spread is concerning 9 Member States; 30% of Germany’s total number of applications are under this topic; Belgium, Finland and Greece are the other standouts in terms of numbers of proposals for urban security, with Czech Republic’s only participation in the 4th Call being under this topic as well.

The full spectrum of EU urban authorities’ size represented
Over 259 urban authorities are involved in applications submitted under the 4th Call for Proposals, representing close to 75 Million European citizens (10% of Europe’s overall population). The size and repartition of the urban authorities applying to the 4th Call is very similar to previous Calls. The core audience (53%) remains cities between 50.000 and 250.000 inhabitants, which is in line with the average European urban fabric. 27% of the applying urban authorities are cities with less than 50 000 inhabitants - and have therefore opted for a joint bid with other municipalities - whereas 21% of the applicants are large cities above 250.000 inhabitants.

A large variety of partners involved
With an average number of 7,1 partners involved, slightly lower than for the 3rd Call (7,6) and 2nd Call (7,3), submitted applications largely promote horizontal (and vertical to a lesser extent) integration. Over 990 organizations participate as Delivery Partners in submitted applications.
The Triple Helix paradigm is thus strongly promoted in submitted projects, with a notable strong involvement of the private sector (large enterprises and SMEs) accounting to almost 60% of all delivery partners. Higher education institutes (49%) and Infrastructure and Service Providers (11%) are the two other most represented types of organizations among partners with a public legal status.

ERDF request
Although projects could ask for up to EUR 5 million € of ERDF budget, on average Call 4 applications ask for around a EUR 4 million ERDF contribution (slightly higher than all previous Calls). The largest ERDF request contribution is EUR 5 million € and the smallest is 1 million €.