Considering cities’ role in a European Union multi-level governance context: an assessment of officials’ attitudes^*

ABSTRACT

European cities claim that the European Union falls short regarding their ‘recognition’, ‘representation’ and ‘participation’ at the policy-making process. Applying the multilevel system paradigm as a conceptual framework, this paper argues that the ongoing European political project allows for the existence of ‘informal governance’ arrangements that could circumvent shortcomings and vacuums generated by the rigidness of the legal framework. The aim of the research is to assess to what extent EU representatives’ personal attitudes could contribute to reduce cities’ lack of recognition, representation and participation. By carrying out in-depth semi-structured interviews with officials from the EU institutions and Eurocities, the study seeks to evaluate their ‘awareness’, ‘dialogical attitude’ and ‘participatory disposition’ concerning the improvement of cities’ influence at the European decision-making level. The research contributes to future academic analyses by identifying preliminary conditions of the scenario where the EU and cities interact.

KEYWORDS:

• European Union’s cities
• European Union’s multilevel governance
• informal governance
• officials’ attitudes
• relational theory

Notes

* The authors appreciate the collaboration of all the interviewees.

1 Cfr Eurostat regional yearbook 2015

2 Council of the European Union (2016): ‘Council Conclusions on an Urban Agenda for the EU.’

3 Data available at http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/policy/themes/urban-development/

4 To put these numbers in context, one can refer to the OECD-EC report Cities in Europe. According to the report, there are 408 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants and 140 with more than 250,000 inhabitants.

5 City-to-city co-operation and twinning partnerships proliferated in the 20th century. Actions through networks and ‘bottom-up’ proposals have flourished more recently.

6 Founded in 1986, Eurocities gathers over 130 of Europe's largest cities and 40 partner cities, that govern 130 million citizens across 35 countries. Although it stands only for a quite specific type of city (minimum of 250,000 inhabitants) members are towns most capable of dialoguing with the EU.

7 The concept of ‘city’ follows the OCDE-EU definition as presented by Dijkstra and Poelman (2012): an urban centre with at least 50,000 inhabitants.

8 A complete relation of interviewees, including name and position, is included as an annex.

9 ‘Reflexive process in which the researcher visits and revisits the data, connects them to emerging insights, and progressively refines his/her focus and understandings’ (Srivastava & Hopwood, 2009, p. 77)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the former Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (current Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad) of the Spanish Government [grant number CSO2009-09948].