How can Europe emerge stronger out of the current crisis?

Energy Cities’ President addressed a letter to the European Commission President von der Leyen to present our solution, in order to ensure economic recovery and boost resilience.

In the past months, local authorities have been in the front line providing an immediate response to the Covid-19 crisis. Despite the epidemic, climate emergency is still ranking very high in their priorities and they still count on a strong EU response to address it.

Many cities have already been laying the foundation for a post-Covid world to emerge. They implemented local transition plans and economic diversification strategies thanks to a successful collaboration with different stakeholders and by harnessing local resources first. They want to be able to continue doing just that in the period to come!

We need more Europe to go more local

That is why Energy Cities calls for a European Recovery Fund with the Green Deal as its backbone. Such Green Deal should build on a robust Resilience Contract to bring about a more balanced, circular and shared economy. Fighting climate change and building economic resilience are the same single agenda.

A new Resilience Contract based on Europe’s solidarity and resources

We see 3 key strategic actions Europe can undertake:

1) Include local resilience pacts as main delivery mechanism for the recovery strategy. This would help them and their communities to jointly redefine their relationships to local ecosystems and their respective responsibilities and commitments to absorb external shocks.

2) Align the EU’s economic governance to the ecological and social emergency. This can be done by climate proofing and mainstreaming all EU funds and programmes, and applying the same logic to Member States’ fiscal and budgetary policies.

3) Build strategic autonomy in vital supply chains by reducing resource and energy demand and relying on solidarity between territories. Therefore, redefine the EU’s energy policy to include an energy sufficiency objective and to increase drastically the share of local sources, notably by applying a district-level approach to the Renovation Wave initiative and by fully leveraging the local heat potential within the upcoming smart sector integration package

Read the full letter to learn more!