Constitutional Space for Cities in Europe: the role of the CoE and the EU
Massey Cities Summit Session: Cities & Civic Innovation
Gabriella Saputelli
Worldwide, globalization and open markets have stimulated competition among territories, reassessed redistribution of resources and changed intergovernmental relationships among levels of governments: the growth of megacities in many countries challenge theories of federalism, and stimulate new studies from a constitutional perspective[1].
Similarly, Europe has seen changes of distribution of resources and powers, transformation of territorial development and spatial planning, and an increasing relevance of subnational entities, with and without states.
From legal perspective, subnational entities have been given growing attention at national, European and international levels by Constitutions, Treaties and Charters, through the establishment of Assemblies of regional and local representatives at supranational levels, principles of subsidiarity and concepts as “multilevel governance” or “multilevel constitutionalism”, which reflect their ‘constitutional relevance’.
The Council of Europe (CoE), first, and the European Union (EU), later, have played a significant role in highlighting the relevance of local governments (through policies, programs, or institutional involvement), under the consideration that they could be very important to improve governance, accountability and democracy (in the CoE perspective) and to contribute to EU integration (e.g. by facilitating the internal market).
The CoE has been the first international organization to give relevance to subnational entities, by providing a representative assembly – the Congress of local and regional authorities – and by promoting several conventions and soft law instruments aimed at evaluating the role of local authorities, such as the European Charter of Local Self Government signed in 1985 in Strasbourg and ratified by all CoE member states. Nowadays, the Charter remains the only international treaty with the aim of promoting and protecting subnational entities, and with a significant value and recognition in Member States[2]. Cities are not specifically mentioned in the Charter, but are implied in the generic mention of “local authorities” “local level” “local self-government”. In recent years, however, also within the CoE cites received more attention in several documents and proposals: the European Urban Charter I (1992) and European Urban Charter II, “Manifesto for a new urbanity” (2008); the CoE Intercultural city programme; the attention to “The status of capital cities” with three Congress Recommendations, adopted in 2003, 2007, 2021; the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform promotion of cooperation among municipalities through initiatives and exchange of practices by: the Inter-Municipal Cooperation in 2010, the Cross-Border Cooperation in 2012, and the City-to-City Cooperation in 2015.
More recent is the attention of the EU toward cities, but also more incisive are its actions. As is generally known, there were no mention of local government in the founding treaties, but the EU’s attitude toward subnational institutions has changed during years, passing from a situation of irrelevance of subnational entities toward the introduction of many changes in the EU treaties and policies, especially during the 1990s (the principle of subsidiarity and the Committee of Regions, for example, where introduced by the Maastricht Treaty). If the EU’s attention has been firstly (and mainly) focused on the role of regions, more recently, also cities have received specific and growing consideration within European policies. The inclusion in the “Territorial Agenda 2030”, the definition of an Urban Agenda for the EU, the “New Leipzig Charter” (2020), and the designing of the European Urban Initiative (EUI) represent the most prominent and recent examples of this evolution and of the relevance acquired by cities[3]. Through EU programs, projects and funds, the importance of this level of government to achieve important goals of integration, culture, sustainable development, democracy has emerged.
At supranational level there are still many difficulties in considering properly the urban dimension as well as in achieving concrete results, and it is still robust the resistance of different institutions in enhancing the role of cities, but it also more evident that there is a huge and long debate that has involved EU institutions, city networks and associations, member states, and has passed through many soft law instruments[4]. The European Parliament resolution of 3 July 2018 on the role of cities in the institutional framework of the Union (2017/2037(INI), for example, is symptomatic of the relevance of this debate at the EU institutional level.
Even if the role of the Council of Europe and of the EU seems powerless in enhancing effectively the power of local governments – especially when considering that their role and powers are established by States and domestic law (national constitutions) – supranational legal frameworks could play an important role in highlighting the importance of the role of cities in Europe. The many initiatives taken at EU level are only the tip of the iceberg of this continuous debate, which at moment appear to be the most important element of the European supranational experiences. In other words, the CoE and the EU have created ‘spaces’ for this debate, also by given subnational entities an institutional arena where their voices could be heard and considered.
In the paper these documents are explored more deeply to verify if there are new possible perspective and useful elements to enhance the constitutional space of cities in Europe, where they are highly subjugated to states[5]. The hypothesis is that supranational debate could give impulse to a new consideration of cities in member states constitutional framework, as it has happened with Regions during 90’.
The current situation with Covid-19 Pandemic raises new challenges for cities and for European policies and actions related to cities. From one side, cities have been strongly impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and, conversely, have shown the crucial role they can play in many policies[6]. From the other side, all the multiple crisis related to the Pandemic (health, economic, social crisis) that are threatening Europe require profound changes in the formulation of public policies by all levels of governments. The EU Recovery Plan and the long term budget for 2021-2027 will be a test to see how much the EU consider cities important to achieve a sustainable recovery for Europe.
Regardless, the European experience represents an observatory of the relevance of cities in the international order, as well as of the role of city networks[7].
[1] Ran Hirschl, City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity, OUP 2020.
[2] On the Charter see G. Boggero, Constitutional Principles of Local Self- Government in Europe (Brill- Nijhoff, 2017); C. Himsworth, The European Charter of Local Self- Government: A Treaty for Local Democracy (Edinburgh University Press, 2015).
[3] For the evolution of the urban policy in the EU see: E. Tatì, L'Europa delle città. Per una politica europea del diritto urbano, Franco Angeli 2020; H. Werner Hess, W. Cycak, The European Union and Urban Development: A Dossier, Hong-Kong, BoD 2018; M. Fernández-Prado, L. Domínguez Castro (Eds.), City Policies and the European Urban Agenda, 2019.
[4] On this debate see: L. Grazi, L'Europa e le città : la questione urbana nel processo di integrazione europea, 1957-1999, Bologna, Il mulino 2006.
[5] R. Hirschl, cit., 87 ss.
[6] I. Tosics, Cities against the Pandemic, Feps Covid Response Papers July 2020 | #6; OECD, Cities Policy Responses, 23 July 2020; European Committee of Regions, 2020 Barometer of Regions and Cities, Brussels 2 October 2020.
[7] See R. Hirschl, cit., p. 28.