As part of the European WiFi4EU funding initiative, the European Commission wants to encourage European municipalities to develop and promote their own digital services. The initiative’s fourth and final call for applications took place from June 3 to 4, 2020. With a call budget of 14.2 million euros, the Commission distributed a total of 947 vouchers to European municipalities in the Member States as well as Norway and Iceland. With this voucher, the municipalities can set up a free Wi-Fi network in public areas.
Participation in the call was again very high this time: 850 applications were received in the first few seconds, and after five seconds there were over 3,000. By the end of the application period on June 4, the Commission had received over 8,600 applications from all participating countries.
The beneficiaries were also selected in this call on a first-come, first-served basis. Geographical balance is ensured by guaranteeing each participating country a minimum of 15 vouchers. Given the high level of interest in the initiative and to ensure that all available vouchers are allocated, there was no maximum number of vouchers per participating country for this call. In the previous calls, the maximum number of vouchers per Member State was limited to a maximum of 8% or 15% (only in the second call) of the funding budget of the respective call.
The results of the fourth call were published on July 8, 2020. The Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA) awarded 61 vouchers to German municipalities, with a further 40 municipalities on the reserve list. If municipalities do not accept the voucher, the municipalities on the reserve list move up accordingly.
You can find the winners here.