What is it?

The European Week of Regions and Cities (#EURegionsWeek) is the biggest annual Brussels-based event dedicated to regional policy.

The event has grown to become a unique communication and networking platform, bringing together regions and cities from all over Europe, including their political representatives, officials as well as experts and academics. Over the last 17 years, it has done much to promote policy learning and exchange of good practices.

In 2019, the #EURegionsWeek reached a record high of more than 9000 participants and more than 330 sessions, which shows the event's relevance and potential as a platform for political communication in relation to the development of EU cohesion policy, raising the awareness of decision-makers about the fact that regions and cities matter in EU policy-making.

What is the purpose of the EURegionsWeek?

• Discuss common challenges for European regions and cities and to exchange ideas on possible solutions by bringing together political representatives, decision-makers, experts and practitioners of regional policy, as well as stakeholders from business, banking, civil society organisations, academia, the EU institutions and the media;
• Provide a platform for capacity-building and the exchange of experience and good practices for those implementing EU cohesion policy and managing its financial instruments;
• Facilitate cooperation and networking between regions and cities;
• Feed into the debate on EU cohesion policy in a wider context, including recent research and views from third countries and international organisations.

Who can participate?

The European Week of Regions and Cities and its events are aimed at:

• European, national, regional and local government officials and experts in the field of managing and evaluating cohesion policy programmes;
• representatives of private companies, financial institutions and 1 European and national associations;
• members of the European Committee of the Regions, members of the European Parliament, and national, regional and local politicians including young elected politicians (YEPs);
• citizens, who want to express their views and contribute to the debate on the future of Europe and their regions and cities;
• academics, researchers, PhD or masters students and practitioners in the field of European regional and urban policy;
• journalists from European, national, regional and local media outlets.

What are the themes for the 2020 edition?

• Green Europe
• Cohesion and Cooperation
• Empowering Citizens

UDITE/VEOLIA

The UDITE VEOLIA partnership have bid for a workshop Rebooting locally via the EU Green Deal that will focus on the increasing focus that local & regional authorities (LRGs) are placing on sustainable growth strategies that contribute to the Green Deal & the implementation of the SDGs. It is the public sector that plays a vital role in driving these strategies that are often long term demanding financial resources that are difficult for the private sector to access alone. The impact of the COVID-19 crisis now injects a new impetus for us to reboot the European economy at the local & regional level. The objective of the workshop if we are successful will be to explore the sustainable financing of Green Deal measures that will generate a green recovery at the local & regional level. To animate this workshop we will invite key speakers we are proposing to invite speakers from the European Commission (FISMA, ENV or REGIO) to discuss long term sustainable financing, Chief Executives responsible for cleaner public transport, circular economy, Housing Europe on energy efficient infrastructures (i.e.social housing), a representative from the private sector to talk about ground breaking environmental technologies and finally a civil society representative to talk about the emerging local sustainable community initiatives that have kicked off since the outbreak of the COVID-19
crisis. An appropriate CoR member will also be invited who has links with our organisation. The call for partners for the 18th European Week of Regions and Cities closed last week and the organisers are thrilled to reveal the unprecedented number of applications received: over 600!

The results of the evaluation process and the final list of partners will be unveiled on 19 May, 2020.

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