October 11 (SeeNews) - Romania's Cluj-Napoca will receive 5.6 million euro ($6.43 million) in EU funding for innovative projects related to jobs and skills for the local economy, the European Commission said.
Cluj-Napoca is the only city from Southeast Europe among 22 EU cities that will benefit from 92 million euro financing from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Commission said in a press release late on Wednesday, announcing the winning cities of the third call for projects under the Urban Innovative Actions.
The cities will use the awarded funding to finance innovative solutions to urban challenges such as air quality, climate change, housing, jobs and skills for the local economy.
According to information published on the website of the Cluj-Napoca city hall, the financing project aims at analyzing and testing scenarios that will enable the cultural, academic, business and administration sector and the community to prepare for the changes that the next 20 years will bring into the labour market.
"Through these calls for projects, we transform EU cities into real laboratories to test solutions that have the potential to improve the quality of life in all the cities of the world," European Commissioner for Regional Policy, Corina Cretu, said in the statement.
Innovative urban actions provide EU cities with resources to finance innovative projects with a total budget of 372 million euro from the European Regional Development Fund for the period 2014-2020. The goal is to identify, test and disseminate concrete solutions to the common challenges of the urban environment.
($= 0.8705 euro)