Cities Forum 2025 - Opening ceremony

Title

Session description

The Cities Forum 2025: Empowering Cities, Shaping Europe’s Future was organised aiming to be the main forum to discuss and exchange on the urban dimension of EU Cohesion policy, and future EU agenda for cities. The Opening Ceremony has set the tone for the event and kick off discussions, taking into consideration the event’s main objectives, namely to provide a platform to exchange and reflect on Cohesion policy implementation, to collect ideas for the EU agenda for cities, and to discuss relevant topics for urban stakeholders in relation to current and future Cohesion policy priorities.

Key insights

The Director General of DG REGIO, Themis Christophidou, thanked all participants for attending the Forum and welcomed participants coming from Ukraine. She highlighted the strong, shared commitment to the future of cities that united all the stakeholders present. She reiterated that the main goal of the Forum was to gather input from participants on the EU Agenda for cities and encouraged everyone to share their experiences with Cohesion policy support - how it is being used, how collaboration can be strengthened, and how cities can be further empowered.

The Secretary of State at the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy, Poland, Jan Szyszko, highlighted how urban development has been central to the Polish Presidency agenda and how they developed the Warsaw Ministerial declaration, a set of recommendations on framework programmes for the post 2027 period. He also highlighted the new role cities should play in the future. He additionally suggested to make a better, more efficient use of collaborative platforms already in place, in order to improve cooperation with cities. The Ministerial Declaration adopted in May 2025 during the Council of the EU Presidency of Poland highlighted some specific recommendations for the EU Agenda for cities, and the role of cities in shaping Europe’s future and achieving its priorities. The New Leipzig Charter’s city dimensions on just, green and productive development are actionable and should serve to share policies.

The Mayor of Kraków, Aleksander Miszalski, welcomed participants to Krakow, explained the city's history and how it is now an example of successful implementation of EU Cohesion policy. With 420 projects implemented, every aspect of life has been benefitting from them: social services, transport, sports, healthcare, city administration and more.

Key take aways

Key takeaways included some lessons for considerations, notably by Themis Christophidou, Director General of DG REGIO who stated that “Cities are where the future is written, where bold ideas are born.”

The Secretary of State at the Ministry of Funds and Regional Policy of Poland, Jan Szyszko, stressed that cities are not just beneficiaries of Cohesion policy, but strategic partners in building the Europe of tomorrow, and as such, they should be involved in the development of policies, not only in their implementation.