Urban Agenda

Cities in the member states of the European Union who wish to exchange with a city facing similar challenges in another global region are encouraged to apply for the International Urban Cooperation (IUC) city-to-city cooperation programme on sustainable urban development. To date, over 60 pairings have been established between local governments. The programme aims to foster links between EU cities and those in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America. Through the programme, local leaders will be able to connect and gain new perspectives on pressing sustainable development issues.

URBACT is calling cities to apply for collaborative networks. It is a great occasion for cities to collaborate together in the frame of URBACT. Cities who joined the Urban Agenda for the EU partnerships are very much welcome to apply as much as other cities willing to engage in co-designing sustainable urban development plans, exchange knowledge, practices, and experiences transnationally.

The EU Green Week would like to announce that if you are planning an event between 13 April and 9 June 2019, you can now register as an EU Green Week 2019 partner event!

With feedback from local and regional authorities on their work on SDGs, the European Committee of the Regions wants to showcase how you have implemented, or currently are implementing, SDGs. This information will be used to influence a future EU strategy on SDGs, to better advocate for a territorial approach in the European and national policy-making process and to boost actions of implementation. Your views on what should the EU do on SDGs, on the priorities the EU should have to act on SDGs will also feed in its opinion on a Sustainable Europe by 2030 to be elaborated during the course of 2019.

Two new partnerships have been endorsed by the Directors-General Meeting on Urban Matters (DGUM) last November. Their work will start in the coming days and weeks. They gather together:

It is official: after an open call launched in summer 2018 and a selection process supervised by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, DG REGIO, the host city of the 2019 CITIES Forum will be Porto (PT).

The present Call for Applications is open for the recruitment of a Panel of External Experts. The panel will be composed of four Topic Coordinators (one for each topic) and around 20 assessors (5 for each topic, depending on the number of project proposals received for each topic) on the four main topics identified for the fourth Call for Proposals:

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The third day of the European Week of Cities and Regions put the Urban Agenda of the EU at the centre of the discussions. With a full agenda, the Square in Brussels saw thousands of urban specialists, practitioners, local and regional stakeholders.

Urban practitioners, projects, initiatives, programmes, authorities and policy makers gathered together in Lisbon on September 13-14 on the occasion of the URBACT city festival.

This consultation will assess how well the various better regulation tools used by the European Commission work in practice and contribute to achieving the objectives of its better regulation policy package of May 2015: evaluation, impact assessment, stakeholder consultation, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, the REFIT Platform and the REFIT Programme.

In 2018 the European Commission launched for the first time ever a European Sustainability Award to reward the efforts and creativity of European people, businesses and organisations turning the global Sustainable Development Goals into concrete solutions and opportunities. For this year's edition, the theme of the award is “Empowering people and ensuring inclusiveness and equality”. If you are interested, apply before 14 September 2018.

LAST MONTH TO APPLY: The 4th edition of the CITIES Forum will take place at the end of 2019 and will welcome 500-600 participants during 1.5 days. Cities interested in hosting and co-organising the CITIES FORUM together with the European Commission are invited to express their interest before 27 August 2018.

This year, the 16th edition of the European Week of Regions and Cities will take place from 8 to 11 October 2018 in Brussels. Registration opens on the 4 July. During the week, representatives from the city and regional level will exchange good practices and know-how with experts and academics in the field of regional and urban development. Additionally, there is room for debates in relation to the development of EU Cohesion Policy, to underline the importance of regions and cities in urban policy making. Furthermore, there will be workshops and networking events.

Registration is still open for the Urban Development Network workshop on Integrated Sustainable Urban Development in the Baltic States, 28 and 29 June in Liepāja. The workshop is open to the cities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania implementing sustainable urban development in accordance with Article 7 of Regulation 1301/2013 (ERDF) and to organisations active in urban development in these countries as well as to the Managing Authorities. Other cities may also participate upon request. Deadline to Register is the 18th June.

The European Commission has put forward ambitious yet realistic proposals for a modern EU budget. It is time for an EU budget that reflects rapid developments in innovation, the economy, the environment and geopolitics, amongst others. The Commission is putting forward modern, clearer and simpler EU financial rules that ensure the EU budget delivers on the issues that matter to Europeans.