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Migration brings various positive aspects. Therefore, it is important to help migrants and refugees to integrate into our societies by giving them proper education amongst other things. This was the panel’s message during the ‘ Migrant and Refugee Integration in Small Territories: A Win-Win Opportunity’ session on Thursday morning during the European Regions Week. In his speech, the President of the European Committee of the Regions, Karl-Heinz Lambertz, confirmed that Europe is not the...

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) invited 100 Young Elected Politicians (YEP) from the local and regional level to take part in the European Week of Regions and Cities 2019. The selected group was gender balanced and included young politicians with different political backgrounds from 26 Member States. Their programme covered attendance at #EURegionsWeek key sessions, discussions with high-level EU politicians, meetings with political groups represented in the European Committee of the...

In the closing session, three European Commission senior officials and the Vice-President of the European Committee of the Regions, each prompted by a 30 second audio-visual feed-back from this week's edition, have provided their own take-away message on each of the following four themes: Marc Lemaître, Director General of Regional and Urban Policy, Europe closer to Cities Markku Markkula, Vice-President of the Committee of the Regions, Future of Europe is Regions and Cities Veronica Manfredi...

What happens when eight young people from different parts of Europe meet for the first time with the aim to start the adventure of their life? The Roadtrip project funded by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy gathered eight charismatic individuals from around the EU and offered them a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The group ventured out on a one month-long trip from the 29th of August to the 29th of September 2019 with the aim of exploring the variety...

Globally, about ⅓ of food produced is wasted each year (FAO) while every day, 821 million people across the globe suffer from hunger (UN, 2017 Report). In Europe, only about 173 kg of food per inhabitant is wasted every year. How can the EU act towards reducing food waste ? How local and regional authorities can turn food waste from public institutions, businesses, and households into a resource for the whole society? These were the questions that were addressed by the representatives of ESPON...

From year to year, the local governments are putting more effort to implement the regional development strategies in Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. Indeed, such actions are more than justified, t he regional policy is one of the essential points of the Association Agreements with these countries. In the boundaries of EU Regions week, the high-level representatives meet together to compare their experience in transition from a centralized planning system, and to discuss their progress on Smart...

Articles focusing on the EU and Cohesion Policy were very positive even in Britain during the Brexit vote, an analysis covering multiple news outlets from 2010 to 2017 has found. Views on the EU and Cohesion Policy were overwhelmingly positive from 2010 to 2017, finds a recent monitoring analysis covering over 20 news outlets and 4400 newspieces. Newspapers such as The Guardian, El Mundo, Wales Online and Bloomsberg all had an overall-positive outlook on the EU. The tone of the media coverage is...

„Stop Brussels”. That is one of the most known political messages of the current Hungarian government. It could be heard on the radio, seen on the television, and read all around the country on billboards. The main political force in Budapest wants to show that the country is independent, and the Hungarian leaders don’t need anyone to tell them what to do. In the meantime, Hungary is very well dependent on the European cohesion policy. And the government needs these EU funds too: the continuous...

Most regional and local represeters who were attending the “Cities and Regions Role in European Making Policiy” conference today thought that citizens and regional authorities’ knowledge about the impact of EU policies in their territory is highly poor. That’s why iniciatives like LUISA exist. This morning the dutch researcher Sjoerdje Van-Heerden, in the context of the EU Regions and Cities Week, has presented the project LUISA for territorial impact assessment and policy evaluation. The...

„Czechia became richer and so the responsibilities are bigger, “commented Joseph Schwarz, from DG Regio, on the new cohesion policy framework for the programming period of 2021-2027. During the current period Czechia´s economy has grown strongly as in 2018 the GDP expanded by 3 percent according to data from the European Commission. European Union´s cohesion policy aims to help weaker economies and less developed regions among the EU member states by various funds. Czechia got in current...