Covenant of Mayors for a climate-neutral Europe-last event
Members and partners of the URBAN Intergroup had a chance to listen to a presentation of the Covenant of Mayors for a climate-neutral Europe last Friday (October 8th).
The Covenant of Mayors is the world’s largest movement for local climate and energy actions. It gathers more than 10.000 local authorities across Europe whose vision is to accelerate the decarbonisation of their territories, strengthen their capacity to adapt to unavoidable climate change impacts, and allow their citizens to access secure, sustainable and affordable energy.
Jan Olbrycht, President of the URBAN Intergroup, recalled at the opening of the event the beginnings of the Covenant, and some raising questions about the status and ownership of this bottom-up network of Mayors. After all those years of activities, the Covenant of Mayors is, according to Jan Olbrycht, “very well known, stable and a prestigious Pact”. He underlined as well the engagement of the European Parliament and the warm words of EP President David Sassoli that “Mayors’ actions will provide concrete results for the European Green deal”, during the Covenant of Mayors – Europe Ceremony 2021 that took place the day before the URBAN Intergroup event. Jan Olbrycht finally reminded the role of local authorities in the implementation of EU policies and targets on the ground: “We need a clear voice coming from the cities especially ahead of negotiations of the Fit for 55 package.”
Eero Ailio, Adviser on Energy Transition and Local Governance, from the European Commission DG Energy and Frédéric Boyer, Head of the Covenant of Mayors Office Europe, jointly presented the achievements and future challenges of the Covenant of Mayors. To set the scene, they recalled the major legislative proposals setting EU climate and energy ambitions, starting with the publication of the Green Deal in December 2019, the European climate Law (March 2020), the 2030 Climate Target Plan (September 2020) and finally the Fit for 55 package (published in July 2021). In this particular context, they showed how the Covenant of Mayors’ bottom-up approach to climate and energy ambitions of the EU. Moreover, the Covenant of Mayors in Europe community brings more than 10 thousand European local governments, which are committed to meet or exceed EU climate and energy targets from 2020 to 2030 and 2050 climate neutrality. This is the largest initiative of its kind in the world. It has been recalled how in 2016 the European Covenant of Mayors became the Global Covenant of Mayors with the engagement of Michael Bloomberg. Thanks to the support of several Commissions DGs and the pooling of different financial sources from EU Funds, the European Union invested in regional offices of the Global Covenant of Mayors.
Last event on the EU´s Affordable Housing Initiative
The URBAN Intergroup had a pleasure to co-organise with the Housing Partnership of the Urban Agenda for the EU an online seminar on “the Affordable Housing Initiative – Co-creation of liveable neighbourhoods with cities and citizens” on Friday, September 17th.
In his introductory speech, Andreas Schieder, Vice-president of the URBAN Intergroup, underlined that affordable housing has become a pressing issue. More and more people are searching for an affordable place to live and accommodation is more and more expensive: that is why the EU, national and local policies can contribute to find solutions to tackle holistically housing issues. Exchanging new solutions and ideas is key.
As former coordinator of the Housing Partnership, Michaela Kauer, Director of the Brussels Office of the City of Vienna, set the scene of housing in Europe and presented findings of the UAEU Partnership, which was conducted between 2015 and 2018. She highlighted that the support of the European Parliament and the URBAN Intergroup was key to set up the whole EU Urban Agenda process. Moreover, she reminded how partners advocated since 2019 the promotion and implementation of the Partnership’s policy recommendations for better regulation, better funding and better knowledge.
Elena Szolgayová, former coordinator of the Partnership from the Slovak Ministry for Construction and Co-Chair of the Housing 2030 project, presented the joint initiative of UNECE (The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe), UN-Habitat and Housing Europe with a focus on affordable and social housing and housing finances. “Housing 2030” works in 4 fields such as housing governance and regulation (including measuring housing affordability), access to finance and funding, access and availability of land for housing construction and climate-neutral housing construction and renovation. She summarised findings of “Housing 2030” project and announced upcoming launch of the final report.
