Active Cities – Green Cities final online event: Green Transition is about the people
- Tessy Melidi
- Jul 3
- 7 min read
The final online event of Active Cities – Green Cities brought the ActGreen project to a close with a clear message: the green transition works best when it is democratic, local and inclusive.
Held on 25 June 2026, the meeting combined a presentation of the project’s key milestones with a round-table discussion in which partners reflected on the lessons learned, the added value for their organisations and the ways they plan to use the project’s results in future work.
Moderated by Tessy Melidi, RegioCop LTD Project Coordinator, the event followed a simple but effective structure: an introduction to the project’s journey, a partner discussion focused on takeaways and citizen engagement, several rounds of questions and answers, and a closing farewell. More than a retrospective, the session worked as a collective statement about what the partnership believes a sustainable city should be: participatory, socially fair and shaped with citizens rather than for them.
A presentation built around people-centred green transition
In her opening presentation, Tessy Melidi framed the project as more than a sequence of international meetings and local workshops. She argued that the partnership started from a deliberate idea: “when people talk about a green transition, they usually just talk about nature,” but “a green transition is really about people,” adding that “a sustainable city must be a democratic city.”
That message shaped her review of the project’s route across Europe. She revisited the themes explored during the 16-month cooperation: sustainable tourism in Bucharest, green jobs in Spain, renewable energy in Hungary, green infrastructure in Ljubljana, green mobility in Kallithea, ecosystem protection in Cyprus and migration in relation to green transition in Braga. By linking these stops together, Tessy showed that ActGreen consistently treated climate policy as a practical civic issue, one that depends on dialogue between local authorities, experts, schools, civil society and citizens.
She also stressed that the project’s real test happened not only during transnational visits but in the local events organised in each partner country. From Bucharest’s work on sustainable tourism to Braga’s workshop on migration and sustainability, these local activities translated European debate into concrete participation and gave women, young people and underrepresented groups a stronger voice in environmental discussions.
Shared lessons from the partners
The round table confirmed that, despite their different institutional roles and local realities, the partners drew strikingly similar conclusions from the project. Three ideas appeared again and again: green transition has to include social inclusion and citizen participation; municipalities are where European climate goals become real; and European cooperation creates usable knowledge rather than abstract exchange.
Greece: Green transition is much more than environmental protection
Speaking for the Greek lead partner, Manos Karakostas said the project changed how sustainability is understood at local level. His first takeaway was “the realization that green transition is not a civil issue… it’s much broader than environmental protection alone,” followed by the conclusion that “sustainability is about people in every aspect.” He said this broader understanding would be carried into future municipal work, particularly where mobility, culture and citizen participation intersect.
His second takeaway focused on cooperation across countries and municipalities. In his words, “the value of European cooperation at the local level is very significant,” because even municipalities with different “size, geography, and local priorities” face similar challenges in climate change, sustainable mobility and participation. For Kallithea, the project results therefore support a stronger local-first approach, using European cooperation as a practical tool rather than a symbolic one.
Romania: Green transition is about participation and inclusion
For Romania, Paula Pasnicu of UNCJR placed the emphasis on the connection between climate policy and inclusion. She said that “the green transition has to go hand-to-hand with social inclusion and citizen participation,” a point that aligns closely with UNCJR’s work on sustainable tourism and local development. The Bucharest workshop had already shown this orientation by supporting the preparation of a national guide of good practices in sustainable tourism and by involving county-level authorities from across Romania.
Paula also described the project as “very valuable as a platform for exchange between partners.” She noted that the examples, ideas and inspiration gathered from other countries can now help UNCJR “better promote fair green and participatory local development in Romania.” In practical terms, ActGreen offered Romania a set of adaptable methods for connecting local governance with citizen-centred environmental policy.
Hungary: Trust is build at the local level
Katalin Kolin-Sabján, speaking on behalf of the Hungarian National Association of Local Authorities, gave one of the clearest formulations of the project’s political lesson. She said: “The green transition is not only about technology, infrastructure, or climate targets. It was about local democracy, citizen participation, social inclusion, and trust.” That conclusion, she argued, explains why municipalities matter so much: this is the level at which European objectives become visible in daily life, from public buildings and heating systems to schools, mobility and green spaces.
Hungary’s intervention also pointed to a concrete use of the project’s results. Drawing on the geothermal examples in Mórahalom and Veresegyház, Katalin argued that the project showed how even smaller towns can become “innovation sites” if they combine local leadership, technical planning and external funding opportunities. At the same time, she added an important caution: “technical solution is not enough,” because green investment succeeds only if citizens understand its value and the benefits are shared fairly.
Spain: Citizens engagement prerequisite for success
The Spanish partner, represented by Carmen M. Peris González, also underlined participation as the condition for success. Her first takeaway was direct: “the green transition can only be successful if citizens are actively involved,” while local authorities have “a key role in encouraging participation and creating opportunities for dialogue.” This reflected the work done in Sueca around green employment and stronger local support systems for the green economy.
Her second takeaway concerned the project’s European dimension. She said that working with partners from different countries had allowed the Spanish team to “exchange good practices, learn from each other, and discover new approaches to common environmental challenges.” For Mancomunitat de la Ribera Baixa, the value of ActGreen lies in this combination of local participation and transnational learning.
Portugal: Inclusion, education and cooperation at the local level
Portugal’s EducPro linked the project especially strongly to education, inclusion and multi-actor cooperation. Carmen Povedano explained that the first main takeaway was that green transition “can only be successful when citizens are actively involved,” and that environmental policies work better when “local authorities, civil society organisations, schools, business, and citizens work together.” This lesson was visible in the Braga workshop, which brought together students and local actors to discuss green transition and migration in a participatory format.
EducPro’s own presentation had already set out the same logic by arguing that “a greener future must also be an inclusive future” and that “a sustainable city must, above all, be a democratic city.” The organisation plans to use the project’s results in future training and educational design work, especially in activities connected to green jobs, social inclusion and the role of migrants in sustainable local development. Povedano’s second takeaway, the “strength of the European cooperation and peer learning together,” pointed to a continued appetite for future joint initiatives with the same or similar partners.
Cyprus: environmental education at the local level
The Cypriot partner highlighted the role of fragile ecosystems, environmental education and new technologies. During the event, Dr Christina Ionela Neokleous said one important lesson concerned “technologies and the AI that can help to monitor and develop the environmental strategies,” referring to data-driven tools for environmental monitoring and sustainable planning. This perspective complemented the earlier online event hosted from Cyprus, which had focused on the Akrotiri Salt Lake area and the need to balance development with ecosystem protection.
For the Foundation Panicos Hadjihambis, the project’s results appear useful in two directions: strengthening environmental education for local communities and developing more informed approaches to restoration, biodiversity and public awareness. The Cyprus contribution showed that ActGreen was not only about urban policy in a narrow sense, but also about the wider ecological systems on which urban life depends.
Slovenia: urban development and lived experience
The Slovenian contribution connected long-term urban policy with the experience of showing a city through local eyes. Simona Berden’s presentation on Ljubljana documented a city that became European Green Capital through more than 1,800 projects, city-centre pedestrianisation, expanded green areas, public drinking infrastructure and continued investment in sustainable mobility. In the discussion, Alenka Pograjc then gave a more personal formulation of the project’s value, saying that participants had the rare opportunity to see partner locations “through the eyes of the locals.”
That remark may sound informal, but it captured an important aspect of the project’s method. The partnership did not only exchange slides and policy concepts; it created situated learning, in which visitors could understand why local choices were made and how citizens experienced them. For Slovenia, this combination of formal policy learning and lived perspective reinforced the value of participatory urban development.
System& G: the value of informal exchange
System& G’s Diana Batraka brought attention to a part of European cooperation that often disappears from official summaries: the informal moments outside the sessions. She said that “outside of sessions, the time spent… was amazing in all the destinations,” and singled out Portugal as a highlight, describing the country as “very structured, very organised” and saying she was “really amazed.” Her remarks pointed to the fact that trust, curiosity and mutual respect are part of what makes policy exchange meaningful.
From project results to future use
Taken together, the partner interventions showed that ActGreen gave each organisation material it can use: examples of citizen participation, local workshop formats, municipal case studies, educational methods, sustainable tourism approaches, energy transition models and practical arguments for linking environmental policy with inclusion.
For some partners, the results will support future work on tourism, mobility or energy. For others, they will inform training programmes, educational tools or advocacy on migration, youth participation and democratic governance. What unites these directions is the same underlying lesson voiced repeatedly during the event: climate policy becomes durable when people understand it, help shape it and see themselves in it.
A closing shaped by memory and continuity
The most memorable part of the event came at the end, when speakers moved away from formal takeaways and shared what they would remember most from the partnership. The conversation turned to dinners, city walks, boat trips, visits to sustainable sites, local hospitality and the unusual privilege of discovering places not as passing visitors but alongside the people who live and work there. Several partners made the same point in different words: what stayed with them was not only the content of the sessions but the way each destination had been opened to them by local hosts.
That after-event atmosphere gave the meeting its emotional finish. The project may have formally ended, but the final discussion made clear that the network built through ActGreen remains active, trusted and ready for new collaboration. The farewell therefore did not sound like a closure in the strict sense; it sounded like the end of one chapter in a partnership that expects to meet again, bringing the same commitment to green transition, citizen participation and European cooperation into future work together.
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