Bordeaux, 11/05/2001 (Agence Europe) - "The European answer to the urban question is presently insufficient", be it merely in the eyes of many city inhabitants, stated the Commissioner for Regional Policy Michel Barnier, when visiting Bordeaux during the conference of "urban dynamics and European projects", organised to assess the urban pilot projects in the cities of Bordeaux, Bilbao, Turin and Utrecht. The conference aimed to see what this answer must be in the future of cohesion policy added the Commissioner. The territorial instruments that are Urban and Interreg are the models that the Commission is examining for the future of the Objective 2 policy, he added, when favouring for the next "package" of the cohesion policy, which will be launched in 2007, the adopting of political objectives at the European level, followed by an implementation with relatively decentralised instruments. Alain Juppé, Mayor of Bordeaux and former Prime Minister, felt for his part that the success of the urban pilot projects (UPP) shows that Europe can be a powerful factor for economic and social innovation, which sadly our citizens often ignore. The UPP has had, in Bordeaux, more impact the working methods than the Objective 2 programme, even if the latter is more important financially, underlined Alain Juppé.
The urban pilot projects, whose second phase was carried out between 1997 and 2001 for 26 projects provided with a global budget of EUR 162.3 million (of which 63.6 from the EU) was aimed at testing the cofinancing of the "innovative" urban projects by the EU. these are in addition to the Urban I Community initiative (1994-1999). For 2000-2006, there are more pilot projects, but a second Urban, and Objective 2 will finance urban projects. As an urban pilot project, Bordeaux had chosen a group of projects ranging from the regeneration of the quay of the Garonne to the rehabilitation of certain districts. Bilbao and Turin have attached themselves to the rehabilitation of rundown districts, and Utrecht at making the museum district more dynamic. In Bordeaux, project leaders said they were satisfied with the experiment, despite certain criticisms. It remains to be seen if these projects have acted, or will act as pilots, examples for the EU urban policy.
Partnerships and networks, two elements appreciated by the urban pilot projects. The decentralised approach and partnerships, mentioned by Mr Barnier and Mr Juppé, are, with the networking of different projects, the main benefits underlined by the beneficiaries of the urban pilot projects. For Carole Jorda-Dedieu, deputy to the mayor of Bordeaux for European affairs, the UPP has had a leverage and lead-on effect - thanks to the European subsidies, we have been able to convince partners to bring the remaining 80%. The UPP, which insisted on the involvement of numerous partners also brought new working methods, a project logic, and continuous assessment. Ilda Curti, head of UPP in Turin, underlined that the added value of UPP is the global vision, the link between projects, but also the networking between the UPP cities. For her, the value does not come so much from the European institutions, but from the network.
Do the pilot projects truly act as a test and example? Anastassios Bougas, head of the assessment unit for the Directorate General Regional Policy in the Commission explained that the Commission would launch, next year, the assessment of the Community Urban I initiative (1994-1999), as well as certain pilot projects. This assessment should be finished mid-2003. Thus neither Urban I, nor the two phases of UPP will have been assessed in a global manner before the launch of the regional package 2000-2006. Moreover, several UPP heads deplored the lack of follow-up on their projects by the EU, and indicated that while they where prepared to pass on their experiences and help Europe in return for the funds, they did not know what Europe wanted, because nothing was asked of them, except an assessment of their project. We can then question the "pilot" nature of these projects, or at least their optimal use by the Commission. Commissioner Barnier recognised for his part the need for a better assessment of the Urban programmes, by assuring that it would be better implemented during the next programming period. For Mireille Grubert, from the European Commission, the UPP and Urban have allowed to develop an incredible amount of experience. Even if it has not been assessed in the strictest sense, the Commission notably has accounts of good practices. The Commission will thus have used the experiences of the UPP to dedicate a small part of Urban II to the networking of cities (EUR 15 million, out of the programme's 700). In the hall and the corridors, some deplored that the Commission has not taken into account the criticism of the "slowness" of its decision-making process (the Urban II projects are still not launched), especially difficult to support for the associations that benefit from the projects. On the other hand, Carole Jorda-Dedieu, as others, underlined that these urban projects contribute towards the visibility of Europe, at least for the people that live in the UPP areas.