Brussels, 16/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - The mayors of the cities of Europe eagerly took the hand held out to them by Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for regional policy, who encouraged them to talk to the European Commission ahead of the forthcoming programming of the cohesion policy.
At the first Urban Forum, which was held in Brussels on Thursday 16 February, hundreds of local representatives met to reflect together on the development of the cities of tomorrow, with the help of the European structural funds. Clear remarks were made regarding the Commission's proposals: the list of 300 European cities (a maximum of 20 per country) included in the “platform for urban development” is unconvincing, as is the 5% of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) reserved for cities, and the concentration on 11 priorities went down even less well. Hanna Gronkiewicz, the mayor of Warsaw and vice-president of Eurocities, wanted to know where this 5% could go, and would like to see the cities considered as equivalent to the regions in the partnership contracts. The MEP Jan Olbrycht (EPP, Poland), rapporteur on the ERDF, stressed that he wished at all costs to “avoid creating regulations which cannot be translated into reality”, and that he preferred the vocabulary of functional urban blocks to the word city, as it better reflects the surrounding areas.
What the mayors want above all is an integrated and decentralised approach, in which the cities are genuinely involved in European policies, and for these policies to take greater account of urban needs. “I do not want the EU to come and tell us in our cities what should be done. There should be major priorities, but also an implementation alchemy, to keep your hand on in order to achieve the objectives”, said the mayor of Dunkerque, Michel Delebarre, who is also the president of the territorial cohesion committee of the Committee of the Regions (COTER). The European commissioner agreed: “The cities hold the key to respond to their own problems. It is in the cities that we can do the best work to reconcile environmental and economic objectives.” (MD/transl.fl)