As part of its effort to promote local and regional perspectives on issues of importance to the European Union, the European Committee of the Regions highlights practical local responses to European and global changes. It shows that, with or without the support of the EU, regions and cities are getting results – and it invites all levels of government to use and learn from lessons from regions and cities.
The Committee of the Regions is committed in 2019 to demonstrating, in particular, that regions and cities are getting results in three areas with both a European and a global dimension:
Integration
Since 2015, the European Committee of the Regions has provided a full set of recommendations across the European Agenda on Migration. The Committee now wants to highlight a particular aspect of migration in which local and regional authorities are critical – integration – because it is in Europe's cities and regions that newcomers are integrated into European society.
Integration must be higher on the agenda of the next European Commission and new European Parliament. The Committee is therefore committed to ensuring that the EU's decision-making communities understand the importance of regions' and cities' work – and to persuading them to provide greater political, financial and technical support to local and regional government.
Through its Cities and Regions for Integration initiative the Committee offers all regions, cities, towns and smaller communities engaged in integration work to meet, to share their experiences, and – collectively – to work to promote a pro-integration agenda. This is one of a range of initiatives undertaken by the networks of cities and regions at the European level and at the global level. The Committee's #Regions4Integration initiative is complementary – to reach communities with whom we are in most contact and to use the specific possibilities that the Committee enjoys, as a consultative body of the EU.
Climate
Without leadership by local and regional authorities, the world will not meet its objective of keeping climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The Committee promotes the deep and broad changes required by the climate challenge in all aspects of its legislative work, as a political patron of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, and as a voice for local and regional government in European and international forums.
International cooperation
The Committee champions the virtues of bottom-up contributions to policy challenges. And it argues for policy changes that empower communities, cities and regions as they seek to find suitable local responses to international pressures.
The Committee makes these arguments within the EU and beyond the EU.
The Committee particularly supports the development of city-to-city and region-to-region partnerships. Its pioneering work includes the creation of Cities and Regions for Development Cooperation and the formation of network to support Libyan cities.
The Committee's #Regions4Dev work with non-EU partners promotes the objectives of the European Consensus on Development and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 – to make cities and regions "inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable".
How your community can catalyse change
The world is changing rapidly and our responses need to be rapid, with action at every level of government.