When Closing a Street Opens a Conversation

Today, cities need Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) in order to receive funding from the EU Cohesion Fund. The Fund is a European Union funding programme that supports poorer regions in developing their infrastructure and tackling climate change. Long before SUMPs became a formal requirement for accessing the Fund, EUKI was already helping Croatian local authorities prepare for this.

The Living Streets project introduced a deceptively simple idea: close selected streets to motorised traffic for a few weeks, and invite citizens to experience what a car-free neighbourhood might feel like. Residents could try out cycling, interact with local climate and energy initiatives, and — crucially — have a say in how their public space was used. The participatory logic was as important as the physical experiment. In a policy environment where urban redesign had rarely involved citizens at the planning stage, Living Streets modelled a different approach and fed into growing momentum around rethinking Croatian cities from the ground up.

Turning EU Requirements Into Local Action

Croatia’s accession to the EU brought a significant shift: cohesion funding came with conditions, and SUMPs became a practical prerequisite for investment in public transport, cycling infrastructure, and intelligent transport systems. Having a plan on paper was one thing; knowing how to write one, implement one, and embed it in a broader climate strategy was another. The EUKI project Climasum addressed exactly this gap, facilitating climate mainstreaming in urban mobility planning through targeted training and structured cooperation between national and local authorities. The results were tangible: up to 18 Croatian municipalities signed a Charter committing to advance the SUMP process. Towns including Križevci, Labin and Brdovec have since joined the Covenant of Mayors — a European network of local governments pledging concrete climate and energy action. These were not symbolic gestures. They were municipalities making a public, verifiable commitment to a low-carbon mobility future.

From Evidence to National Strategy: The Cycling Breakthrough

In 2023, Croatia became the first country in South-Eastern Europe to adopt a national cycling strategy. This document envisions cycling as a serious mode of daily commuting and travel, alongside pursues better cyclist safety. The path to that milestone ran, in part, through the city of Velika Gorica and the EUKI project Cyclurban. Working at the local level, Cyclurban evaluated how cycling — including e-bikes and cargo bikes — could be integrated into future urban planning and how its uptake could be meaningfully promoted. The evidence base and policy recommendations the project developed fed directly into the national strategy process. Cyclurban was not the only factor, but its contribution was direct and documented. Meanwhile, in Ivanić-Grad, the project Ready4NetZero took a complementary route. The project installed EV charging stations and introduced a bike-sharing system alongside new cycling infrastructure. The efforts of the project demonstrate that the shift to sustainable mobility is not just a planning question but an infrastructure one. And that small cities can lead it.

Preparing the Ground for what Regulation now Requires

The transition to electric vehicles has accelerated sharply since 2023, driven in part by the EU’s Fit for 55 package and — most concretely — the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Regulation (AFIR), which makes large-scale EV charging deployment binding across member states. Croatia is now subject to those requirements. But the groundwork for meeting them was laid earlier, through EUKI-funded project Alpe-Adria Clean Transport Alliance (AaCTA), which between 2020 and 2022 built a cross-border network of decision-makers from Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Austria. The project’s most practical output was a planning tool: the AaCTA toolbox allowed local authorities to calculate precisely where new charging stations would be most used and most cost-effective. That kind of evidence-based siting matters enormously in a country where public investment in EV infrastructure is still catching up to demand. AaCTA did not wait for AFIR to make deployment mandatory — it gave municipalities the tools to act before the regulation arrived.
 
Croatia’s streets are not yet transformed. The systemic shift to clean transport — in a country where car dependency remains high and infrastructure investment uneven — is still underway. But the foundations are there: trained planners, committed municipalities, a national cycling strategy, cross-border charging tools, and cities that have already shown their residents what a different kind of street can feel like. The regulation is catching up with the groundwork.