The European Commission hosted the first European Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Alliance (ECAVA) forum on 23 and 24 June 2026 in Brussels. This landmark event gathered industry leaders, policymakers, municipal representatives, and international partners to advance the collective ambitions of Europe in connected and autonomous mobility. The forum marked the first major public milestone since the alliance was established in October 2025, focusing on shifting from technical cooperation to concrete industrial deployment.
As a newly selected participant organisation within this strategic platform, ERTICO was actively involved throughout the proceedings. The selection highlights the role of ERTICO as a trusted multi-sector partnership operating at the intersection of digital, transport, and automotive innovation.
Launching the ADACities Flagship Initiative
A central highlight of the forum was the official launch of the Autonomous Drive Ambition Cities initiative by Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen. Operating as a mobility flagship under the Apply AI Strategy, this initiative aims to accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence-powered autonomous mobility solutions across European urban areas.
Participating cities will target fleets of 100 or more autonomous vehicles by 2030, including solutions such as autonomous shuttles, robo-taxis, and advanced self-driving cars. This initiative addresses the current lag in deployment compared to global competitors, seeking to establish a scalable and profitable business case for the European automotive industry while delivering safer, cleaner, and more efficient public transport for citizens.
Bridging the Governance Gap
A critical takeaway from the forum is how this new flagship initiative fills a vital operational gap in Europe's autonomous mobility strategy. While the existing Member State-led Joint Declaration establishes the necessary regulatory, permitting, and political framework among national governments, it lacks a direct European city coordination mechanism.
The new initiative directly addresses this by introducing city-led consortia as core co-governors of implementation. By explicitly identifying established urban frameworks, including the ERTICO Cities Moonshot, as part of its ecosystem, the initiative ensures that local mobility needs, public transport integration, and real-world commercial scaling are placed at the very centre of Europe's technological sovereignty goals.
Enhancing Deployment and Avoiding Fragmentation
The forum highlighted the strong alignment between European policy and industrial implementation. ERTICO’s active footprint at the event was led by CEO Joost Vantomme, alongside senior experts Stephane Dreher and Andras Csepinszky.
During the session, ERTICO delivered a clear strategic intervention regarding the operational rollout of the new initiative. Joost Vantomme spoke directly on ecosystem building and partnerships. He emphasised how ERTICO's unique public-private partnership model helps bridge the gap among European automotive OEMs, technology providers, and the municipal networks driving urban deployment.
Drawing on years of experience coordinating Europe’s connected, cooperative, and automated mobility ecosystem through successive support actions such as CCAMbassador, ERTICO outlined key principles to ensure success:
- Avoiding duplication: The initiative should build directly upon the existing ecosystem instead of creating parallel structures. The clearest added value lies in addressing artificial intelligence-specific challenges, such as access to computing infrastructure, while utilising established frameworks to support transport deployment.
- Aligning governance: While the underlying cross-border testbed framework is primarily led by Member States, the new initiative introduces city-led consortia as prominent operational actors. Proper alignment between national governance and local municipal needs is essential.
- Prioritising practical use cases: Cities consistently request demand-driven applications, particularly automated shuttles, feeder services for public transport, and urban logistics, rather than technology push solutions.
- Integrating infrastructure and data: Automated vehicles require physical road infrastructure integration and should connect to established data-sharing platforms such as SENSORIS and TN-ITS to guarantee scale and interoperability.
ADACities Implementation Roadmap
The operational rollout of the initiative was further detailed during a specialised session on 25 June 2026, which featured two main parts designed to move from planning to sustainable, commercial deployment:
- State of Play: Focused on the Call for Expression of Interest, implementation support via BoostEDIC, and compliance with AI Act provisions and CAV cybersecurity risk assessments.
- Scaling Autonomous Mobility: Brought together the city perspective, featuring frontrunners like Turin and Helsinki alongside networks like Polis and Eurocities, and the EU industrial perspective.
Active Working Group Engagement
Moving forward, ERTICO is actively driving progress within three specific alliance working groups:
- Software defined vehicles: Contributing to discussions on scaling common open-source ecosystems and industrialising non-differentiating software building blocks across the European automotive stack.
- Artificial Intelligence and Data: Supporting the development of trusted data sharing frameworks and collaborative model development to ensure security and scalability.
- Autonomous vehicle deployment: Preparing large-scale testbeds and supporting the operational deployment framework to ensure safety assurance and regulatory alignment.
Through this balanced public-private partnership model, ERTICO remains dedicated to translating Europe’s technological excellence into tangible, large-scale industrial leadership.