Towns and cities are home to nearly three quarters of the EU's population. Many EU cities and urban areas are vibrant spaces of economic growth and innovation. However, they also face complex challenges, such as tackling inequalities, addressing housing and demographic issues, building inclusive societies and responding to climate change and environmental degradation. Cities are at the forefront of implementing EU legislation in several policy areas, including cohesion, and have been demanding both a stronger role in shaping these policies and greater access to EU financial resources. The EU's cohesion policy has a strong urban dimension. Its role in supporting sustainable urban development was strengthened in the current 2021 2027 programming period to help cities play an active part in shaping and implementing policy responses to their own challenges. Cohesion funds invest more than €100 billion in towns and cities. For their part, cities are directly responsible for designing and implementing investments worth over €24 billion under cohesion policy programmes. The 2016 Urban Agenda for the EU and the launch of participatory partnerships have created new expectations about the role of urban authorities in EU decision-making. The Pact of Amsterdam provided for urban partnerships focusing on key themes, such as air quality, urban poverty and housing. However, progress in empowering cities within cohesion policy has been limited. Stakeholders evaluating the progress of the Urban Agenda for the EU have highlighted issues such as insufficient EU resources channelled into urban issues, obstacles in obtaining direct EU funding, a lack of effective long-term urban governance mechanisms and limited input from urban areas into EU policies. On 3 December 2025, the European Commission launched the EU agenda for cities to support cities in delivering on Europe's green, digital and social priorities. This new framework recognises the importance of cities in many policy areas and provides a set of instruments to involve them in EU policymaking. The current briefing is an update of a previous briefing on the new urban policy agenda for the EU. Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP Read more