Budapest mayor Karácsony advocates for cities’ direct access to EU funding at Eurocities meeting

There is a consensus among European city leaders that cities should have more direct access to EU funding, Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony said in a video on Facebook on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting of the European Parliament and Eurocities, an urban lobby organisation.

Karácsony advocates for direct access to EU funding

Mayors and MEPs have discussed ways to allow cities greater direct access to EU funding, and “guarantees that governments, first and foremost that of Hungary but of other countries too, are trying to dismantle to strip cities of their funding.”

Despite the differences between their cities, the mayors agreed that “partnership should be taken seriously at the distribution of EU funding, and cities, councillors and local communities should be heard,” Karácsony said.

In the case of Budapest, such partnership “is a matter of life and death,” he said.

Benedek Jávor, Budapest’s representative in Brussels, said the European Commission was drafting the next seven-year budget, adding that it was of paramount importance that cities’ interests were integrated into the European financial system.

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