{"id":422789,"date":"2025-03-27T12:12:38","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T11:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/03\/27\/eurocities-sindaci-scuderi-crisi-casa\/"},"modified":"2025-03-27T14:29:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T13:29:53","slug":"eurocities-to-the-european-parliament-mayors-should-have-a-greater-influence-on-eu-policies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/03\/27\/eurocities-to-the-european-parliament-mayors-should-have-a-greater-influence-on-eu-policies\/","title":{"rendered":"Eurocities to the European Parliament: ‘Mayors should have a greater influence on EU policies’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – Local authorities claim greater space in shaping European policies<\/strong> that affect them closely. They do so at a time when – in the face of global geopolitical tensions and the race for competitiveness and rearmament – the risk is that Brussels will reduce its commitment to\u00a0implementing\u00a0the social rights pillar. The warning\u00a0comes from the European Parliament,\u00a0where yesterday (March 26), the ‘Cities Social Summit 2025’ was held, an event organized by Eurocities, the network<\/a> that brings together over\u00a0200 European cities.<\/p>\n

Three MEPs from the Green Group hosted the event: Italy’s Benedetta Scuderi<\/strong>, Sara Matthieu, and Gordan Bosanac. “We increasingly need<\/strong> collaboration between the local level and Europe<\/strong>,” said Scuderi. “Local authorities are the institutions that know in depth the most pressing needs of the citizenry and can transfer this knowledge to the European level for good planning of funds.”<\/p>\n

At a time when the European Commission’s executive vice president in charge of Cohesion Funds,\u00a0Raffaele Fitto, of the same party as Giorgia Meloni, is working on the mid-term review of the 2021-2027<\/strong> programming, the AVS MEP’s appeal is loud and clear: “We need to expand the resources for cohesion even more. More importantly, we must establish direct contact with cities and local authorities to\u00a0allocate funds. Housing emergency, essential services, schooling and health, and energy poverty: these are all issues on which, from Europe, we can work together with cities, even\u00a0to combat the depopulation in rural\u00a0areas and those facing greater\u00a0difficulty.”<\/p>\n

\n

\"Scuderi\"<\/a>
Greens MEP Benedetta Scuderi<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/figure>\n

EU Commissioner for Energy and the Housing Crisis, Dan J\u00f8rgensen, has\u00a0recently<\/a>\u00a0indicated that the EU executive could double the resources of the Cohesion funds allocated to housing policies, from 7.5 to 15 billion euros<\/strong>. For Scuderi, the right to housing “is one of the greatest crises of our time.” The secretary general of Eurocities,\u00a0Andr\u00e9 Sobczak,<\/strong> also emphasized this, stressing the risk of forgetting to work “on social inclusion and particularly on the housing crisis” in the face of “strong geopolitical and competitiveness tensions.”<\/p>\n

Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal in her European rearmament plan hinted at\u00a0such a scenario, giving member states the option of\u00a0converting part of the funds earmarked for Cohesion for\u00a0military spending<\/strong>. The European Greens\u00a0strenuously oppose<\/a>\u00a0this proposal, but,\u00a0given the use of urgency procedure for Rearm Europe that rules out going through\u00a0Parliament, they will not be able to block.<\/p>\n

Also present at the event was the mayor of Florence, Sara Funaro<\/strong>, who signed the city’s 100th commitment to implement the European Pillar for Social Rights principles. “Florence has always been a city that has been very close\u00a0to these issues, at\u00a0the forefront of giving answers to citizens —\u00a0the most fragile ones. Today we are here to launch a message of inclusion and equality,” said the Dem mayor. In the Tuscan city of art, which welcomes millions of tourists from all over the world every year, “we are working on\u00a0both the regulation and the limitation of short rentals<\/strong> thanks to a regional law that has just been approved,” Funaro said, announcing that “we will also soon have our own regulation to reiterate the halt\u00a0of new openings in the historic center area, in the UNESCO area, and also the possibility of conducting\u00a0a study on the other areas.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

European network gathering over 200 cities at the European Parliament for ‘Cities Social Summit 2025’. Green MEP Benedetta Scuderi: “EU should work with local authorities to improve social policies”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":422777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29788],"tags":[28288,27088,27979,30319],"class_list":["post-422789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diritti-en","tag-benedetta-scuderi-en","tag-fondi-di-coesione-en","tag-eurocities-en","tag-crisis-housing-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422789"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422828,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422789\/revisions\/422828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}