Until 16 July, Moldova has an open European call under which ten cities in Moldova and Ukraine will each receive €40,000 for an urban project, according to the State Chancellery, which serves as the National Point of the URBACT programme. The statement names no specific city — but sets a condition Ungheni meets from the outset: the call is open exclusively to towns and municipalities, and Ungheni is one of the country’s 13 municipalities.
What the call actually offers
The call is named “URBACT Accelerator for Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova” and has three strands. The first, Urban Knowledge, is a programme of learning and exchange between cities. The third, EU Mentor City, brings in up to ten cities from European Union member states that offer guidance and practical support — without receiving the money themselves.
The strand with funding is the second: the Urban Action Lab. Through it, ten cities from Moldova and Ukraine together will each receive up to €40,000 for “small-scale pilot urban actions.” This is not heavy-infrastructure money, but funds to test a concrete solution in a town, using the URBACT methodology and local stakeholders. The work programme runs from November 2026 to May 2028 and focuses on urban reconstruction, revitalisation, resilience and crisis management.
URBACT is the European Union’s programme for cooperation between cities, funded from the European Regional Development Fund; in this cycle, for the first time, it was also opened to cities in candidate countries, including Moldova and Ukraine. Applications are filed online, through the European Commission’s EUSurvey platform, until 16 July.
How narrow the gate is
The figure of ten places must be read correctly: not ten cities from Moldova, but ten from Moldova and Ukraine combined. On the right bank of the Prut, Moldova has about 50 towns and municipalities that meet the eligibility condition — a newsroom calculation, starting from the 67 urban localities recorded by the National Bureau of Statistics, minus the towns on the left bank of the Dniester. Add to these the dozens of Ukrainian cities. All compete for the same ten grants.
There is another nuance easy to miss: the up to ten mentor cities from the European Union do not receive the €40,000 — they provide expertise. The money goes to the ten selected cities from Moldova and Ukraine. Otherwise, the call is more a capacity-building tool — methodology, exchange of experience, “preparation for future European funding opportunities,” as the statement itself puts it — than a source of large investment. For comparison, just the first phase of Ungheni’s water-and-sewerage project, with German support, came to €2.9 million.
What Ungheni brings to the table
If there is an asset, it lies in experience. Ungheni has a string of European projects behind it: the rehabilitation of water and sewerage networks and of the “Mihai Eminescu” lyceum through German cooperation (GIZ), the Tourist Information Centre built under the “Mayors for Economic Growth” programme, investment via EU4Moldova and loans from the European Investment Bank, plus town twinning with European Union cities. The municipality was also designated one of the growth poles of the German-supported regional development programme — meaning an administration already used to writing and running projects with external donors.
What Ungheni does not have is URBACT experience as such. The official list of Moldovan cities that have taken part in the programme’s networks shows only Cimișlia and Edineț — smaller towns. For Ungheni, a successful application would be a debut. The call’s themes — urban reconstruction, resilience, communities hosting refugees — also overlap with the profile of a border town that took in refugees from Ukraine.
The other side: why success is not guaranteed
The sum is small and heavily contested. Ten places for all of Moldova and all of Ukraine mean slim odds for any single city, however well it bids. The €40,000 covers a small-scale pilot, not a project that transforms a town. And the real benefit takes work: a team to run an “urban action lab” with local stakeholders for nearly a year and a half. In short, it is an opportunity for capacity-building and a European network, not a cheque.
This article is based on the State Chancellery’s statement, the official URBACT call page and the European Union’s information source, as well as on National Bureau of Statistics data on administrative-territorial organisation. The estimate that about 50 right-bank towns and municipalities are eligible is the newsroom’s, starting from the 67 urban localities recorded by the NBS, minus the localities on the left bank of the Dniester. The fact that Ungheni has not yet taken part in a URBACT network is attributed to the programme’s official list for Moldova; we did not identify a public statement from the town hall on an intention to apply.