How to Free Small Municipalities from the Fear of Innovation? PROMOTER Shows the Way to a Greener Future
The European Union offers massive financial support for the modernisation, sustainability and greening of towns and cities. Yet many small and medium-sized municipalities avoid international projects. Why? And how can we help them overcome this barrier? These questions were at the heart of the August meeting of the PROMOTER Stakeholder Group, held in Benešov.
At the meeting, attended by mayors and representatives of municipalities in the DSO Benešovsko association, we openly discussed the future of regional development and the implementation of the Action Plan (SECAP). The main item on the agenda was not only presenting our own achievements (establishing the municipal energy company and running the BysBus system), but above all a dialogue on how to replicate these successes in other municipalities in the region.
Barriers facing rural areas
The discussion made it clear that small municipalities are very interested in modern and sustainable technologies. They want community energy, they want to share solar power and modernise transport. So where is the catch? The municipal representatives named three main blockers:
- Administrative burden: Concerns about complex bureaucracy and reporting.
- Financial risk: Fear of grant corrections and the need for large co-financing.
- Capacity and language barriers: Officials in small towns often have neither the time nor the language skills to manage transnational consortia.
The “DSO Umbrella” and “Discovery Partner” models
At DEX Innovation Centre, we believe the solution is not to push small municipalities into complex projects, but to change the way they take part in them. At the meeting, we therefore presented two working strategies. The first is the so-called Umbrella model. A regional association (such as DSO Benešovsko) takes on the heavy administrative and financial load, and the municipalities act only as beneficiaries – they join a working demand-responsive transport or shared energy system, while the complicated paperwork is handled by a central team. The second solution for European projects is the role of a “Discovery Partner”. It allows municipalities to join an international network “on a trial basis” – without responsibility for a budget, purely to absorb know-how and break down language barriers.
The PROMOTER project is approaching its climax, the final conference in Sintra, Portugal, this November. Our goal, however, is more long-term: we want the experience and confidence we helped build in Bystřice to motivate other Czech towns to take bold steps towards a more sustainable and modern future.