With ever more ambitious climate and digital transformation goals, the already vast to-do list for Europe’s regional and local authorities keeps expanding. From biodiversity to clean energy, sustainable industry, and technological innovation, the EU’s regions are embarking on a long road where many of the changes will have to occur simultaneously.
Unless cohesion policy – the bloc’s instrument to bring its regions economically and socially closer together – adapts to the challenges of tomorrow, the EU risks entrenching the divides between its territories.
In this special report, EURACTIV takes a closer look at one of the EU’s biggest and oldest tools for reducing the disparities across communities, charting what may be the game-changers — or naval mines — of the next decade.
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MEP Omarjee: Cohesion, not ‘renationalisation’, should guide Europe’s policies
Social and territorial cohesion among the EU's region's, as well as their convergence, must remain at the centre of Europe's recovery plans lest efforts to support investment and growth should lead to more regional divides, MEP Younous Omarjee told EURACTIV.
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Beyond potholes: Tailor-made solutions, structural support needed to transition
With an increasingly long to-do list and decreasing amount of time to complete the energy transition and hit the EU's climate targets, communities will need help and involvement from Brussels to meet their benchmarks, experts say.
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Europe’s military mobility, a game-changer for regional infrastructure projects?
Since the 1990s, European infrastructure has been developed purely for civilian purposes, but in recent years military aspects have gained in importance as they could fill funding gaps for dual-use infrastructure projects. Rail Baltica, a 870-kilometer-long high-speed rail line from Tallinn …
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Cities see lobbying efforts bear fruit in drive for direct access to EU funds
The coronavirus pandemic has opened new opportunities for European urban centres to have greater access and be involved more in the spending of EU funds. While personal meetings play a crucial role lobbying efforts, the pandemic has pushed the Commission to …
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Mayor: Cities are the atoms in the organism of the EU
Mario Rajn, the mayor of Križevci, a medieval city of 20,000 people northeast of Croatia's capital is pushing for his city to become energy independent by 2030. He explains what actions have been taken so far.