EIT Open Innovation Call for Proposals

EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) Urban Mobility's mission is to accelerate change towards a sustainable mobility model for liveable urban spaces. In the current context of climate emergency, their objective is to support communities of innovators to develop solutions that help mitigate and adapt to climate change and, at the same time, are able to improve the quality of life of our cities, create jobs and strengthen the European mobility sector.

Therefore, the main emphasis of their Innovation Programme for 2023-25 is to radically advance commercially viable solutions/services/products that support this mission and those goals. Since 2020, they have had a growing portfolio of projects to support agile and collaborative mobility projects across Europe. They work with innovators in city administrations, research organisations and businesses, to strengthen the urban mobility ecosystem.

EIT has now published an open Call for close-to-market innovation proposals in three ‘challenge’ areas:

• Sustainable City Logistics
• Energy and Mobility
• Future Mobility.

In particular, EIT is looking for proposals that address the issues facing public, private and hybrid transport providers, including testing and validating new transport services and improved operations. EIT will prioritise projects that are close-to-market, capable of testing new solutions in real-life city demonstrations and that can be commercially viable by the end of the project.

This Call aligns with the aims and objectives of the EU’s Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities’ Mission and encourages the selected 112 cities that have committed to Net Zero climate neutrality by 2030 to apply.

Why are climate-neutral and smart cities important?

Cities play a pivotal role in achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and reducing emissions by 55% by 2030, the goals of the European Green Deal. In addition, cities are home to 75% of the EU population, thus aim to offer their residents cleaner air, safer transport and less congestion and noise. Cities take up just 4% of the EU’s land area but consume over 65% of the world’s energy and account for over 70% of global CO2 emissions. This EU mission aims to support 100 cities to accelerate their green and digital transformation to become climate-neutral and smart cities by 2030, and act as experimentation and innovation hubs to enable all European cities to follow suit by 2050.

The call opened on 6 April 2023 and closes on 7 June 2023. External evaluation of proposals (1st stage) are in July-August 2023.

For more information on ther key dates, funding, evaluation, selection etc., and for contacts on legal, financial and administrative procedures, or content-related questions, visit the EIT website.