ABSTRACT
Soon the European Union will be visiting your city too. That is the message of the Urban Agenda that was recently drawn up by the European Union. The EU tends predominantly to be associated with ‘Brussels’, supranational bureaucrats and the political tug-of-war between Member States and heads of state. In a city you only really tend to run into the European Union when, in the context of the rotating presidency, the European Council sets up shop there, such as happened in Amsterdam during the first six months of 2016. Currently, we only think of the ‘European city’ as the site of international treaties or important policy proposals: Rome, Schengen, Dublin, Maastricht, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bologna, Nice, Lisbon. However, this is changing with the arrival of the Urban Agenda, which was published by the European Commission in July 2014.
