Brussels, 02/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - Last week, the EP's regional development committee debated the draft report drafted by Kerstin Westphal (S&D, Germany) on the urban dimension of EU policies.
She pointed out that 72% of the European population lived in an urban area and this document called for the urban areas “to be more closely associated with the entire European policy-making cycle”.
To achieve this end, Westphal is calling for a European urban agenda and several additional measures. These would include an early warning mechanism that would enable local authorities to flag up breaches of the subsidiarity principle. An analysis on the urban dimension and the appointment of a special EU urban envoy are also envisaged.
Matthijs Van Miltenburg, shadow rapporteur for the ALDE group (Netherlands), spoke in favour of these proposals and suggested that they needed to “work within existing structures, rather than create new ones”. He also said that this special envoy should be the Commissioner for Regional Development but renamed the Commissioner for Regional and Urban Development. With regard to the specific impact analysis on urban policies, he said he supported the setting up of a “workgroup at the European Commission”. Andrew Lewer from the United Kingdom, the shadow rapporteur for the ECR group, also spoke against setting up new structures and asked whether they were going to set up additional administrative layers or replace something that already existed. Westphal explained that this was not about setting up new institutions.
The GUE/NGL and the Greens spoke positively about the report but called for it to spell out more concretely the challenges facing the urban areas. Monika Vana from the Greens mentioned, for example, the lack of housing, climate change, unemployment and public services.
Bas Verkerk, the mayor of Delft, also spoke during the debate in his capacity as Committee of the Regions representative. He was delighted with the draft report and proposed that the European Commission set up a platform that would allow for an exchange of best practices between European cities. (Jean Comte)