Brussels, 10/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The acting President of the informal Urban Policy Council on Monday, Belgian Economics and City Minister, Charles Picqué, said that the vast majority had called for the specificity of urban issues to be recognised and for the unavoidable increase in financial means for urban policy to be stressed. He highlighted that this attitude was not so forthcoming only two or three years ago, when there had been resistance to the idea or urban policy. Few countries, including the United Kingdom, are reported to think that it is too early to express opinions about regional policy post-2006 and the role an urban development policy might play. The seven Ministers and Secretaries of State, the seven high-level officials and the one MP who between them represented Member States at the Council all stressed the importance of examining current policy in detail (the URBAN initiative and Objective 1 and 2 programmes) before expressing more detailed views. It needs to be decided, for example, whether an EU urban policy should only cover problem areas or whether it should cover broader polycentric development of towns and cities in Europe. The Commission has pledged to organised a second Urban Forum at the beginning of 2003 to assess structural policy and draw up broad guidelines for new programmes after 2006, along with the financial package, explained Mr Picqué. Developing actions for cities is included in the guidelines proposed by the European Commission.
The Council gave its opinion on the guidelines and a methodology to be followed to try and consolidate certain aspects of co-operation in urban policy, and called for an extension of public-private partnerships for urban projects (rehabilitating former industrial sites, etc). These partnerships would first be based on the exchange of experience, expertise at Commission level and an assessment by the Commission of the issue of legal obstacles (problem of compatibility between state aid and competition rules). Following the Conference on Participation of Citizens that was held on Monday and Tuesday, the Ministers reaffirmed their desire to continue their efforts to increase citizen involvement in conclusions that Mr Picqué himself admitted were hardly revolutionary. The EU stressed the importance of associating citizens with the drawing up of urban policy; hoped that concrete proposals would be made at a future meeting; and called for an annual or six-monthly conference to be held on this topic. The Council also stressed the importance of better coordination between structural and sectoral policies, calling for the different Commission services working on urban issues to be better co-ordinated (environment, regional policy, etc), possibly by creating an inter-service group. While stressing the importance of sharing experience and information, some Member Sates supported France's suggestion of setting up an EU urban generation network of 20 to 25 big cities looking at citizen involvement issues, the public-private partnerships and how the different levels of power would intervene.