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The European Parliament publishes PPMI‘s study on Social Challenges in Cities and Policy Brief on Cities and the Ukrainian refugees

22 Jul 2022

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The European Parliament publishes PPMI‘s study on Social Challenges in Cities and Policy Brief on Cities and the Ukrainian refugees

The European Parliament‘s Policy Department for Structural and Cohesion Policies has recently published PPMI‘s study on Social Challenges in Cities and Policy Brief on the Cities and the Ukrainian refugees prepared for the Regional Committee.

The study explores social challenges and policy responses in EU cities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. It demonstrates that the pandemic has placed additional pressures on vulnerable groups and the institutions that work to support them. It finds that the local policy capacity to respond to the crisis has differed across cities and multi-level governance settings. Participatory and integrated policy efforts have often failed to meet the expectations of urban citizens and stakeholders. To move towards urban resilience in times of crisis, EU-level funding needs to become more accessible and focused on long-term transformations, as well as improving policy dialogue with those cities most limited by ineffective local governance structures and historical legacies.

The policy brief summarizes the implications of the influx of refugees from Ukraine for European cities, and how cities can navigate challenges to continue being a positive factor in the support of Ukraine. The briefing is based on available official sources and expert commentaries. The PPMI research team conducted desk research in English, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Romanian and Polish languages. National experts supported the search for information on the situation in Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Slovakia, Spain, and Malta. The brief shows that a relatively small number of EU countries and cities have taken a bigger responsibility for hosting the refugees from Ukraine and that the local city infrastructures are struggling to provide adequate support – especially in the long term. At the local level, it will be important to learn from this experience to ensure that one is ready and prepared for potential new waves of refugees and to improve the overall urban resilience systems of cities. The national governments and the EU can play a key role in further ensuring financial assistance to the most affected states and alleviating the financial pressure not just on the national level but also city level in the most affected regions.

Read online or download the study and its executive summary as well as the policy brief in English on our Research4Committees blog or the EP Think Tank.