Missions – Advancing Strategic EU Priorities through Multilevel Action

Europe’s strategic priorities increasingly depend on the ability to coordinate action across levels of government. Competitiveness, resilience, security, climate action, and industrial transformation cannot be delivered through isolated policies or funding programmes alone. They require governance that connects European, national, regional, and local actors around shared goals.

Missions — Advancing Strategic EU Priorities through Multilevel Action argues that Europe already has practical experience of how this can be done. Drawing on evidence from the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, this working paper shows how mission governance has evolved from an experimental approach into a tested model for coordinating investment, regulation, innovation, and public action across sectors and levels of government. Rather than treating cities as beneficiaries of policy, the publication makes the case for recognising them as strategic implementation partners in delivering the European Union’s priorities.

The publication builds on emerging evidence from the Cities Mission to examine what mission-based governance has achieved in practice. Across Europe, Mission Cities have developed new ways of aligning public authorities, businesses, financial institutions, researchers, and citizens around shared objectives. They have created governance structures that coordinate action across energy, mobility, digital infrastructure, nature, finance, and industry, while turning long-term strategies into investable programmes. Taken together, these experiences demonstrate that Europe has already developed governance infrastructure that can be applied beyond climate policy to support a wider range of strategic priorities.

Through examples from cities across Europe, the working paper explores how mission governance strengthens local industrial capacity, mobilises innovation ecosystems, de-risks investment, and creates demand for European clean technologies. These cases are not presented as isolated examples of urban innovation. Instead, they illustrate how integrated governance and multilevel coordination can accelerate implementation, strengthen competitiveness, and improve the delivery of European policy objectives. The publication argues that this accumulated experience provides valuable lessons for the European Union as it prepares the next Multiannual Financial Framework and reshapes its policy architecture around strategic priorities.

Building on these insights, the working paper concludes with two recommendations for strengthening multilevel governance within future EU policy and funding frameworks. It proposes embedding dedicated Urban Chapters within National and Regional Partnership Plans to ensure cities are involved in shaping reforms and investments from the outset. It also recommends integrating cities more systematically across Horizon Europe and the European Competitiveness Fund by linking funding instruments to the Climate City Contracts and investment plans already developed through the Cities Mission. Together, these recommendations aim to connect proven local governance mechanisms with European and national policymaking, allowing existing implementation capacity to contribute more directly to shared strategic objectives.

This working paper is intended for European, national, regional, and city policymakers, practitioners, and others working on the future of EU governance. It offers evidence that mission governance is no longer solely an approach for advancing climate action. It has become a practical model for organising coordinated action across levels of government, connecting investment with implementation, and advancing Europe’s strategic priorities through multilevel action.