UDITE CONGRESS : CHALLENGES IN TIMES OF COVID-19

Last updated: 22 Dec 2021
The main theme of the UDITE Congress revolved around the challenges that COVID -19 has created for local government and its chief executives and policy directors.

In a first pre-conference presentation by Dorothé Allain-Dupré, Head of Department of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), spoke about the impact of COVID-19 on local and regional authoritiesand in particular the different strategies that had been developed to cope with it.  During her presentation Ms Allain- Dupree made reference to their new website - OECD Regional Recovery Platform  - that gathers examples of how local and regional authorities in the OECD countries are working to get through the crisis. The issue was revisited in the Saturday morning workshop where a round table hosted by Founding UDiTE President,  Gérard Combe, discussed  the World Economic Forum's Global Risk Report 2021 and recent surveys conducted by Primo Europe and UDiTE to identify the needs and perceived challenges from the perspective of the local government chief executive. UA panel of UDiTE members then participated in a panel debate, including Philippe Rossignol (Berchem-St.Agathe, Belgium), Karen Camilleri (Qormi, Malta) and Xavier Boivert (Mordelles, France) where the moderator invited them to react on the basis of their experience in recent months.
In a final session, Céline Du Boys, from the Institute of Public Management and Territorial Governance from the University of Aix Marseille spoke about her European project that has been looking at resilience and the financial impacts on local authorities across Europe as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. You can watch this workshop again and download the presentations on our Congress 2021 webpage