European cities should be able to contribute to Energy and Climate laws. This peer learning programme may make it possible.

A peer learning programme to support Member States in setting up multilevel dialogue platforms will start in January 2025.

From January to March 2025, six Member States will benefit from the output of the two-year experimentation programme that supported six EU countries (Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Portugal, Croatia, and France) in setting up multilevel dialogues. These dialogues aimed to build their National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) and to become permanent, even after the submission of the final version of the NECP.

Each focused country set up different dialogue formats, and thanks to this diversity, the replication programme will be able to support a diverse range of countries, taking into consideration their national contexts and specificities.

Local actors already play a pivotal role in implementing Energy and Climate laws. They should also be able to define them.

The European Commission asked Member States to submit their final versions of their NECPs by 30 June 2024. Even though many of them missed the deadline, the process of developing these plans required the involvement of multilevel actors, and dialogue platforms have been one means to achieve this.

In the above-mentioned six focused countries, setting up these dialogues hasn’t always been an easy process. Political crises, difficulties in gathering various stakeholders, and the feeling of not being heard by national governments have been challenges faced by some countries. Whether they managed to overcome them or found alternative approaches, they now have many pieces of advice they can share with other member states to adopt the best strategy early in the process of setting up dialogues with various stakeholders.

Twenty-one member states have now the opportunity to involve more local stakeholders.

Partners from the six participating Member States will train organisations from the rest of the EU who want to import the multilevel governance dialogue platform model developed within the project NECPlatform through a peer learning programme.

The programme will support organisations in gaining a better understanding of the legislative framework and of the possible structures that the Climate and Energy Dialogue Platform can have. This includes all steps necessary to map and engage relevant stakeholders, ensure continuity, find appropriate governance forms, build and keep a trusting relationship with the national government, and more.

The programme is open to ministries and ministries personnel. Organisations that can support and influence NECP and/or other national plans’ processes in their countries, such as national energy agencies or ONGs, are also welcomed.

A minimum of six organisations will be selected and tutored by NECPlatform national partners through online training (with three separate steps) and a physical meeting in Brussels.

The programme applications will be open from the 4th of November until the 29th of November 2024, and the programme will start in January 2025.

Submit your expression of interest through this link by the 29th of November 2024.