With the support of eleven other major cities and capitals, the mayors of the Pact of Free Cities alliance, which includes Bratislava, Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, have sent a letter to the President of the European Commission asking for more funds to be directly allocated in the next European budget to tackle environmental and climate issues in particular.
In the letter they state that the measures in question may be new actions or extensions, or overhauls, of existing schemes, including ‘Urban Innovative Actions’, funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Horizon Europe, “that will allow cities to introduce green policies”.
The ERDF currently includes a budget line of 6% that is directly allocated to cities. Rafał Trzaskowski explained at a press conference that the intention would be to allocate up to 10% to cities under the cohesion policy, particularly for investment in the transport sector.
Bypassing national level. The challenge is to bypass strictly political compromises at national level with regard to the distribution of financial allocations under cohesion policy. As these mayors are in more or less open conflict with their respective national governments, they are concerned that they will lose out if decisions are based on anything other than rational considerations.
Capital cities suffer from a major paradox: they represent a considerable share of national GDP, but have very little income of their own.
The letter has so far been signed by the mayors of Berlin, Vienna, the Hague, Athens, Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Frankfurt, Košice, Milan and Strasbourg.
The mayors also met with Frans Timmermans, the Executive Vice-President, today. Tomorrow they will meet Elisa Ferreira, the Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)