ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the urban policy in the European Union (EU) from initial birth to the implementation of the Community Initiative (CI) URBAN in London and Marseille. It seeks to draw certain conclusions from the empirical study. The chapter reviews what we have learnt about how the Commission expands its policy competences beyond what could have been foreseen by the founders of the European Community (EC). It compares and contrasts the experience of URBAN in the two case studies. The chapter concludes that the notion of multi-level gatekeeping may be more useful than that of multi-level governance in understanding the limits of EU urban policy. It discusses some broader issues raised by the EU's urban policy experiment. The chapter concentrates on points that can help explain the expansion of the Commission's policy agenda. The notion of multi-level gatekeeping may therefore be more relevant in understanding the limits to EU urban policy than that of multi-level governance.
