Local leaders want EU to fund affordable housing, sustainable mobility and adaptation to climate change.
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As Europe heads to the polls, the Continent’s local leaders say that climate change and housing are the most important issues facing their constituencies.
The latest Eurocities Pulse Mayors Survey — conducted in the months leading up to June’s European Parliament election and shared exclusively with POLITICO’s Living Cities — polled 92 mayors in 28 European countries.
For the second year in a row, climate change topped the list of most important issues for Europea’s urban areas. More than a quarter of the bloc’s municipal leaders said that global warming was the biggest threat facing their city; over two-thirds said they felt the majority of their citizens demanded action on decarbonization policies.
But the surveyed mayors also worried over the sort of public anger with which green measures have been received in cities like London and Brussels, where citizens have protested initiatives to slash car use and improve air quality. Thirty-eight percent of survey participants said they were concerned about backlash to local climate policies.
Ninety-four percent said their main challenge in implementing measures to address climate change was access to funding. They varied, however, on how they’d use cash if they had it: Nearly a quarter wanted more urban vegetation, while an equal amount sought to invest in energy efficiency and decarbonization. One in 5 wanted to execute more nature-based solutions, and 1 in 10 said building adaptations were crucial.
Since last year’s poll, the number of mayors citing access to affordable housing as a top priority doubled. More than a third listed housing as a key concern, up from 15 percent in 2023.
The results mark a shift in the housing issue: Once the purview of low-income residents, it’s now also a worry for the middle class.
“We are facing a severe shortage of decent, affordable and adequate housing,” said Renaud Payre, a vice president of the Métropole de Lyon, an authority encompassing the city of Lyon and its suburbs. “Front-line workers who provide services that are essential to the smooth running of our society — social workers, nurses, cashiers, cleaners, public transport drivers, etc. — no longer have access to housing in our cities.”
More than three-quarters of respondents said they’d been forced to compromise between delivering high-quality and affordable housing, ensuring energy standards and increasing housing quantity. About half want the European Union budget to set aside cash to mitigate an estimated €57 billion annual investment gap in affordable housing.
Payre called on the next European Commission to set up a “dedicated Platform on Housing to support partnerships between national, regional and local authorities and housing providers.”
The survey reflects mayors’ growing exhaustion with the additional responsibilities they’ve taken on in the wake of successive crises. In recent years, local leaders have been on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, taken in refugees from war-torn Ukraine and had to address spiking energy and cost-of-living expenses.
More than half of the participants said they hadn’t received additional resources to manage these challenges. Thirty-eight percent complained that their national governments had imposed austerity measures on them, further reducing already strapped budgets. More than half also complained a lack of funds kept them from hiring staff and addressing their key challenges.
The mayors asked for an improved relationship with the EU that would sees cities working more closely with the bloc’s institutions. Nearly half want a long-term strategy to foster this relationship; more than a third want Brussels to explicitly recognize local investment as a pathway to greater European integration.
Naturally, mayors said they wanted more financial support from the EU. Nearly half said they needed the bloc to allocate more cash for sustainable urban mobility infrastructure, from trams to bike lanes. Here, too, climate was listed as a top concern: Thity-five percent of mayors want the EU to launch a “real” social climate fund that spreads resources to the local level.
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