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Cities Forum 2020 in Porto…RU:RBAN was there!

Edited on

24 February 2020
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The Cities Forum 2020 (Cities Forum) took place in the Portuguese city of Porto on January 30th-31st. The concept of the event was that of a “Contacts Fair” where participants had a real opportunity to meet with representatives of many cities and EU Programmes present at the kermesse.

The main sessions were dedicated to official speeches, panel discussions, sessions on the next programming period 2021-2027 and the role of cities and funding opportunities, leaving the remaining time to networking activities and constructive peer-to-peer discussions. As Ms Helena Ferreira, Commissioner for Cohesion, quoted “local problems must be solved locally”.

The RU:RBAN cities of Caen, Rome and Vilnius had the opportunity to work together with the URBACT Secretariat at the URBACT stand, where a timeslot was allocated for the promotion of the project. Very productive discussions were held with Mr Emmanuel Moulin, Head of the Secretariat, as well as with URBACT experts and National Contact Points to analyse the capitalization possibilities of RU:RBAN and future opportunities for the Programme such the extension of the URBACT model beyond the European Union. In line with this topic, reference was also made to the synergy currently being developed between the IUC (https://iuc.eu/na/home) and the URBACT programmes as part of the RURBAN project: the transfer of the good practice of Rome will also take place in the Colombian cities of Barranquilla and Soledad. In fact, a first meeting is scheduled for the second half of March in Barranquilla.