The members of the Committee of the Regions have launched a new call on the European Commission to make the Urban Agenda binding in the future, in an opinion defended by Kieran McCarthy (European Alliance, Ireland) and adopted in plenary on Wednesday 4 July.
The members expressed concern at the lack of ownership by the various players due to the voluntary nature of the partnerships and the passivity of certain member states, as well as internal dysfunction caused by the lack of rules on the distribution of duties and responsibilities.
They therefore consider that new legal mechanisms should be set in place between the institutions of the EU, the member states, the cities and, more generally, all stakeholders, to support the implementation of the Agenda. Within this framework, they call for implementation “to be based on binding force”.
Within this framework, they call firstly upon the Commission to mobilise all Directorates General to accompany the cities and, secondly, for the member states' involvement to be at the level of the ministry concerned, rather than default to the ministry responsible for urban development. In connection with this, the members of the CoR hope to increase the dovetailing of the Agenda with peripheral and rural areas.
Another point of concern is the management of resources. Here, the members criticise the imbalance between major urban centres, which are well supplied, and more modest towns, which are by definition less well off financially, which raises issues in the implementation of partnerships. They therefore call for a stable and multiannual budget to be set in place.
Readers may recall that in its proposals for the next budgetary cycle, the Commission presented a new European urban initiative, bringing all existing urban programmes together within a single instrument (see EUROPE 12029). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)