Direct EU Funding to Budapest for Green Development

The European Commission is directly funding green developments in the Hungarian capital, as part of a mission to aid achieving the 2030 climate goals in a hundred cities in Europe, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony has announced.

As the Hungarian state news agency MTI reports, the European Union's Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities mission is also supporting Miskolc in northeastern Hungary and Pecs in the south, the Mayor said in a social media post.

The 100 cities come from all 27 Member States, with 12 additional cities coming from countries associated or with the potential of being associated to Horizon Europe, the EU's research and innovation program (2021-2027).

The Cities Mission will receive EUR 360 million of Horizon Europe funding covering the period 2022-23, to start the innovation paths towards climate neutrality by 2030. The research and innovation actions will address clean mobility, energy efficiency and green urban planning, and offer the possibility to build joint initiatives and ramp up collaborations in synergies with other EU programs.

The mission's aim is to help European cities achieve their climate goals by 2030 and become "experimentation and innovation hubs to enable all European cities to follow suit by 2050," the mission's website said.