Covenant of Mayors Demonstration Projects Eastern Partnership (CoMDeP) Programme was initiated by the European Commission as a response to the challenges faced by small cities (up to 200 000 of population) that signed the European flagship initiate “Covenant of Mayors" in the Eastern Partnership countries. Due to the limited budgets, insufficient funds for investments and limited access to credits
, small and medium-sized municipalities in the EaP countries often are not able to finance the measures described in their Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAP) from their own budget. In the context of limited technical and financial capacities in municipalities, CoMDeP supports 23 CoM signatories in implementing projects from their SEAP (Demonstration Projects). The CoMDeP Programme comprises three main components:
- Grants awarded to 19 selected projects, involving 23 local administrations;
- Technical, procedural, communication and networking assistance provided by the CoMDeP Support Team;
- Access to funding in the field of energy efficiency and renewables through the Municipal Project Support Facility (MPSF). General information: Upon the results of a two-stage competition of the European Commission, a total of 19 projects, involving 23 Covenant of Mayors signatories, have been selected and received grants from the EU in the amounts varying between 400.000 and 1,2 million EUR (11 projects in Ukraine, 3 in Moldova, 3 in Belarus, 1 in Armenia and 1 in Georgia). Each city has signed a grant agreement with the European Union. The EU in total allocated 14.2 million EUR of grant funding while the signatory municipalities co-finance another 2.7 million EUR. All projects shall ensure co-financing at the level of a minimum 20%. The projects focus on energy savings through:
• Buildings refurbishment
• Upgrading heating systems
• Introducing energy-efficient street lighting
• Upgrading public transport
On February 19, 2015 the kick-off event of the Programme was held in Kyiv to launch the Demonstration Projects, while on April 27, 2015 the capital of Ukraine hosted a two-day international consultation meeting organized by the EU Delegation and CoMDeP Support Team. The majority of projects started their activities in April 2015, most of them already having implemented or are in the process of energy audits of the facilities, which is an obligatory stage for further implementation of the project activities. According to the work plan, individual consultations, trainings and other supporting actions are envisaged for the cities participating in the Programme during the whole period of the projects’ implementation. With a view to providing direct assistance to the signatory municipalities in the course of implementation of the Demonstration Projects in their cities, the Programme Support Team was established consisting of three international key experts as well as a number of national experts in charge of certain directions of the Programme implementation.
