“We are in a rupture, not in a transition.”
With these words, Maarten Hajer, Professor at Urban Futures and Futuring and Director of the Urban Futures Studio, defined how Europe is facing many crises at once: climate impacts are accelerating, housing has become unaffordable for many, and democratic institutions are under pressure. And these crises materialise in cities.
“I want to speak about the goal that you have in your hands,” Hajer insisted. “It is the promise of the European city.”
The central argument of the Eurocities Annual Conference ‘Sharing Horizons, connecting people’ in Utrecht was also the core purpose on which Eurocities was built: cities are both sites of pressure and spaces of possibility. They are where Europe’s challenges are felt most sharply, but also where answers are being shaped. But cities cannot lead on ambition alone; they need full financial and political support from the national and European levels.
Where Europe becomes real
For Themis Christophidou, Director General of the European Commission’s Regional and Urban Policy department, this tension between pressure and possibility is exactly why cities have moved to the centre of European policymaking.
“Cities are strategic partners… they are the foundation of Europe’s future,” she said, “they are places where Europe is experienced, reimagined and reinvented daily.”
Her remarks traced a long evolution: “This strategic partnership is in our history. It’s in our DNA.” From the first urban initiatives in the 1990s to the Urban Agenda for the EU in 2016, European policy has gradually moved towards recognising cities’ role in shaping real change.
Today’s EU Agenda for Cities builds on that longer political journey, one in which city advocacy, including through Eurocities, has helped keep urban realities on the European agenda. The growing recognition of housing as a European priority, for example, reflects years of pressure and coordination among cities. “By working together we have helped bring that message to Brussels,” recalled Laia Bonet Rull, Deputy Mayor of Barcelona. “Today, housing is a strategic European priority, which seemed impossible years ago.”
Cities are strategic partners… they are the foundation of Europe’s future.
European programmes such as URBACT and the European Urban Initiative have nourished a culture of cooperation born in city networks, allowing cities to share challenges, learn from one another and co-create solutions across borders.
Mathias De Clercq, Mayor of Ghent, gave that cooperation a broader meaning. It is, he said, “what I would call the European way of doing things. It is about working across borders, across political lines, across levels of government, while always keeping our citizens at the centre.” In that sense, city networks such as Eurocities do more than connect municipalities. “You learn from each other, and that’s the cheapest way to achieve success,” Hajer put it bluntly.
It is also what gives cities their particular strength. While national policy debates can become abstract, cities translate ideas into practice, into neighbourhoods, housing, streets and services.
Trust is about what people can see…
Because cities shape everyday life so directly, they can give people something larger than delivery: they can give them a sense of direction, belonging and shared purpose. “When people feel that institutions help them face the challenges of everyday life, trust grows,” said Laia Bonet. “And when trust grows, democracy becomes stronger.”
This is what Maarten Hajer was getting at when he said, “Ursula von der Leyen needs narratives to make people be ready to defend Europe. And my claim is that European cities are one of those golden narratives.”
These narratives are built through concrete choices: how a station is designed, how a street is reclaimed for pedestrians, how social housing is delivered. Hajer called this idea – that shared spaces can create dignity, belonging and pride – “public luxury”.
He pointed to examples across Europe. Rotterdam’s central station, designed for efficiency and to inspire a sense of openness and connection. Vienna’s social housing, where affordability coexists with high-quality living, creating environments that challenge assumptions about what public provision can be. Cycling infrastructure in cities like Utrecht, where mobility is functional enjoyable, and desirable.
Ursula von der Leyen needs narratives to make people be ready to defend Europe. [...] European cities are one of those golden narratives.
Sharon Dijksma, Mayor of Utrecht, pointed to her city’s Science Park as an example of what European cooperation can make possible: a place where city government, science and business have come together around a shared agenda, with European support helping turn local ambition into a globally recognised health and innovation ecosystem.
Bonet explained how European funding has helped accelerate the renovation of residential buildings in her city, cutting energy use, lowering bills and making homes more comfortable in winter and summer.
…and the stories that make them believe
“Planning is nothing but persuasive storytelling about the future,” Hajer said. “Public policy is something that you can actually do to make people feel at home in your city by showing what public place can be.”
In times of democratic strain, cities have a particular power: they can make public action visible in daily life, and in doing so they can show that institutions still work for people. “Cities are not just places of pressure. Above all, cities are places of hope, of opportunity, engines of innovation, creativity and talent,” said De Clercq. That matters because democratic trust is built through whether people feel safer, cooler, better housed and more able to move around the city they live in.
This is also where networks like Eurocities come in, as a practical way for cities to turn possibility into progress. Hajer captured it neatly when he said, “You allow to imitate. Imitation is good. Share your examples. And obviously, share the conditions under which they work, because that is policymaking.” The point is to understand the conditions that make it work, so that one city’s breakthrough can become another city’s starting point. That kind of exchange is only possible because Eurocities has built relationships of trust over decades, allowing cities to share what works, and where they have struggled, adapted or failed, to learn from each other more honestly as a result.
Democracy: contested, but defended locally
The same proximity that allows cities to build trust through visible action means they feel backlash, polarisation and disaffection earlier and more intensely than other levels of government.
Cities are not just places of pressure. Above all, cities are places of hope, of opportunity, engines of innovation, creativity and talent.
Three centuries ago, recalled Sharon Dijksma, Utrecht was a place where nations “chose dialogue over conflict” and built compromise through time, patience and trust. Today, she argued, European cities are where that same spirit must be defended in practice, because they are “where democracy and the rule of law are practised and defended and made visible in people’s everyday lives”.
Across Europe, democratic norms are being tested by polarisation, disinformation and the growing confidence of anti-democratic forces. Because cities are closest to residents, they feel those pressures first: in public debate, in neighbourhood tensions, and increasingly in direct hostility towards local leaders themselves.
At the Eurocities Annual Conference, local leaders agreed to answer this challenge. Dijksma argued that cities must keep listening and keep speaking, even when disagreement hardens. The key, she suggested, is “to stay in the conversation”. Cities cannot turn their backs on difficult debates; they have to keep making the case for what kind of city they want to be, and why. That means being persistent, but also respectful, showing people not only that change is necessary, but that they have a place within it.
De Clercq also made the political engagement of cities unmistakable. “When national governments remain silent, we speak up, we stand up,” he said. In a period when democratic values are sometimes challenged from above, cities are increasingly defending them from below: through public leadership, through solidarity, and through the daily practice of openness, diversity and tolerance. That role is exercised in the choices cities make, in the spaces they protect, and in the way they continue to govern under pressure.
Cities, strongholds of democracy
The latest Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey findings show just how central this has become for local leaders. One third of mayors now rank democracy and services for citizens among their top priorities, reflecting growing concern about democratic backsliding, political polarisation, disinformation and declining trust in government. The survey also shows that four in five mayors report direct exposure to online violence, harassment or disinformation. Far from being a marginal issue, democratic strain has become part of the everyday reality of city leadership.
When national governments remain silent, we speak up, we stand up.
What emerged in Utrecht, however, was a story of collective resilience. André Sobczak, Eurocities Secretary General, brought the argument back to what Eurocities exists to do in moments like this: connect cities so that democratic pressure does not become isolation. “We are a network of cities, but we are also a network of people,” he said, “people that share the same values, the same concerns and the same ambitions.” In a context where city leaders are increasingly tested, coming together within Eurocities gives mayors and city officials a collective voice and a form of political backing that individual cities would struggle to build on their own.
Sobczak went further, arguing that the context now requires Eurocities to stretch beyond technical exchange and issue-based advocacy. “Europe is under attack. Democracy is under attack. Cities and their values are under attack,” he said. That expands the role of the network. It remains a place for learning and cooperation, but it must also help cities defend democratic space, build solidarity across borders and support leaders facing pressure at national level. In that sense, the benefit of being part of Eurocities is also the strength that comes from knowing cities do not stand alone when their values are challenged.
Cities may be anchors of democratic resilience, but they cannot carry that responsibility alone. As Sharon Dijksma summed it, “when democracy is challenged, it is at the local level where its impact is felt most directly. And it is also at the local level where we can respond to it most effectively. But we cannot do this alone. We need our partners at the European Union to stand united defending the rule of law and safeguarding our democracy.”
A growing gap: expectations without means
Cities are expected to defend democratic values and to lead on climate, housing, mobility, inclusion and economic resilience – often all at once. That is what makes them both uniquely capable and uniquely stretched.
They treat these issues as connected agendas. A transport project can also cut emissions and improve access to jobs. Housing renovation can lower energy bills while reducing inequality. Public space can support health, safety and social cohesion at the same time.
The latest Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey findings reflect that reality. Climate action remains the top priority for mayors in 2026, cited by 44%. Affordable housing follows at 39%, while urban planning and infrastructure have risen to third place at 37%. Social inclusion and equity remain high at 34%. Together, these figures show that mayors are managing interlinked needs.
But that breadth of responsibility is also what makes cities vulnerable. They are expected to lead across almost every major transition, yet too often without the frameworks, resources or political backing needed to do so at scale.
When democracy is challenged, it is at the local level where its impact is felt most directly. And it is also at the local level where we can respond to it most effectively. But we cannot do this alone.
“We need to fight for a general principle that should get as much attention as the principle of subsidiarity,” said André Sobczak. “When we have a new European strategy or new European legislation that creates new burdens for cities, there also needs to be financial support that goes together with this new burden for cities. We cannot afford that cities do the job that is decided by others without actually having the resources to deliver.”
Uncertainty ahead
Themis Christophidou argued that cities are fundamental to the European project: “The Commission is committed to the active involvement of cities,” she said, citing plans for annual high-level dialogue with cities, simpler technical cooperation, a single EU-Cities portal and a future EU Cities platform offering funding guidance, capacity building and technical assistance.
She also pointed to stronger support for urban development that involves everyone, prepared under city responsibility, and to opportunities for cities in the future European Competitiveness Fund. The direction, clearly, is towards a more structured partnership. But will these new mechanisms be strong enough, and backed with enough resources, to match the scale of responsibility already placed on cities?
The Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey shows just how structural that charge has become. Financial constraints and budgetary pressures were the most frequently cited unexpected challenge for mayors in 2025, affecting more than 31% of cities. Nearly one in five mayors also rank consolidating public budgets among their priorities for 2026.
The tension between ambition and means is not new. Anna Lisa Boni, Deputy Mayor of Bologna recalled the Pact of Amsterdam as a decisive political milestone because “it changed the paradigm through which the EU wants to work not only on cities or for cities, but with cities”. The concern now is whether that principle of partnership will hold in the next funding cycle.
Money is only part of the problem. Mayors also point to fragmented funding streams, heavy administrative requirements and complex procedures that slow delivery. Their message to the EU is consistent: cities need more direct and predictable funding, fewer barriers, and stronger local and national government collaboration so they can help shape policy and investment plans. As Karen van Dantzig, Urban Envoy at the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and Anna Lisa Boni both underlined, cities must also be at the table when national plans are drawn up, or the risk of centralisation grows and the urban dimension is weakened.
We cannot afford that cities do the job that is decided by others without actually having the resources to deliver.
This is why the debate on the seven-year EU budget matters so much. The question is whether the European Union is prepared to fully back the level of government it increasingly relies on to deliver results. Without that support, the risk is not only that cities move more slowly, but that Europe weakens the very actors best placed to turn pressure into possibility.
This is also where Eurocities proves its value. By bringing cities together around shared priorities, the network helps turn local experience into a stronger collective case at European level. It allows cities to argue together, with evidence and with political weight, that housing, climate investment, democratic resilience and urban development all depend on the local, national and European levels working together.
A decisive decade
As the discussion in Utrecht turned to the future, the question was whether Europe is ready to back cities once again.
The Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey points to both opportunity and risk. A majority of mayors expect a more direct relationship with the EU over the next decade, with 52% anticipating more direct EU funding for cities. At the same time, others fear greater centralisation or renationalisation, which could leave cities with less room to act.
Europe’s future will not be shaped only through strategies, declarations or budget lines. It will be shaped in the places where people test every day whether public institutions improve their lives: in homes, streets, neighbourhoods and public spaces. Supporting cities, then, is central to whether Europe can deliver on its own promises.
