Strengthening the Urban Agenda for the EU

Towns and cities are home to nearly three quarters of the EU's population, and most EU policies concern them, be it directly or indirectly. While the 2014-2020 cohesion policy framework introduced a number of new instruments intended to enhance the urban dimension of cohesion funding, a shared vision of urban development has gradually taken shape at intergovernmental level, accompanied by increasing calls to give city authorities and stakeholders a greater say in policymaking. To help guide these discussions, the European Commission launched a public consultation following its July 2014 communication on the urban dimension of EU policies. Its findings indicated broad support among city stakeholders for an Urban Agenda for the EU. The European Parliament also prepared an own-initiative report on the issue, as part of a process that would ultimately lead to the signing of the Pact of Amsterdam on 30 May 2016, a clear political commitment to deliver an Urban Agenda. With the pact providing for urban partnerships focusing on key urban themes such as air quality, urban poverty and housing, all 14 partnerships have now drawn up action plans, allowing the partners involved to contribute to the design of future, or revision of current, EU legislation. Many of these plans are now at the implementation stage, and the partnerships' work is beginning to have an impact on EU policymaking, with the European Parliament and the Commission taking the recommendations on board. Challenges remain, however, with stakeholders highlighting issues such as limited resources, a lack of effective governance mechanisms or low participation of smaller cities. In this context, both the new cohesion framework post-2020, which includes a European urban initiative to support the Urban Agenda, and the New Leipzig Charter, which outlines the next steps for the Urban Agenda, have the potential to improve the delivery and impact of the Urban Agenda. The process of strengthening the Urban Agenda, however, will ultimately depend not only on the partnerships' ability to deliver actions but above all on the extent to which they are taken up by the Commission, a process requiring full commitment from all partners involved. This is a further update of an earlier briefing originally published in 2016 and last updated in 2019.