The newly selected Regions, that applied for the 2nd and last CLIMAAX call for applications, belong to 19 countries and will receive more than EUR 6,6 million cumulated funding. As a whole, the project will give financial and technical support to 69 Regions in their path to the climate resilience.
Now the family is complete: the selection committee has announced the 37 newly selected European Regions which will be funded and supported in performing regional Climate Risk Assessments through the CLIMAAX project. As a result of the two open calls, the project will ensure financial and technical support to 69 regions which will receive, together, more than EUR 12 million from the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change.
The main objective of CLIMAAX is to support the implementation of the EU Adaptation Strategy and especially the first objective of the Horizon Europe Mission Adaptation: preparing and planning for climate resilience. The project was designed to select at least 60 regions and/or communities that will implement the proposed methodological Framework and Toolbox to conduct regional/local multi-risk Climate Risk Assessments. The regions benefits from the possibility to conduct their CRA supported by the CLIMAAX consortium. At the same time, it is a learning experience, for the consortium and the Mission on Adaptation, getting to know what is actually needed and what are the available capacity and skills at the regional level. This will support future developments towards tailored and sustainable climate services and adaptation support.
Through the first Open Call, that ran from 8th of December 2023 to 22nd of March 2024, a first bunch of 32 Regions were selected to receive, together, more than EUR 5,5 million. These regions have already started the execution of their own Climate Risk Assessment. Now, the second open call adds new members to the group. From the 263 proposals submitted from the 1st of July to 15th of October 2024, 29 were deemed non-eligible while the in/out scope screening further shrank the evaluable applications to 185. The residual proposals have been evaluated according to the criteria of Relevance, Impact and Implementation. Each criterion scores from 0 to 5 points. Unfortunately, 87 proposals did not meet the overall minimum threshold of 11.5 points (as the sum of the three criteria scores) or did not reach the minimum for each individual criterion (3 points).
The 98 applications that scored above the threshold received additional points to prioritize regions or communities with high vulnerability and low adaptive capacity to climate change. This aspect was evaluated following the regional composed Vulnerability Index produced by the JRC Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre. The final list of selected recipients consists of 37 applications; they will receive, together, EUR 6.634.703,05. This brings the total amount for both calls to EUR 12.073.594,36. The EU grant contribution that each applicant may receive is based on a lump sum scheme applying to a Country Correction Coefficient (CCC) that considers the country in which the third party is located. The maximum amount of financial support ranges between EUR 115.227 and EUR 300.000.
From the regions selected for the second Open Call, Albania, Bulgaria, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and Türkiye count the largest number of selected proposals (3), followed by Croatia, France, Greece, Ireland, Slovakia, Spain (2). One selected proposal came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Montenegro, Slovenia and Ukraine. Considering both the Open Calls, the country more represented is Greece (8) followed by Bulgaria, Portugal and Türkiye (7).
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