The Mission: Levelling-up in Europe

• Giving people throughout Europe the chance to develop themselves economically, socially and culturally in familiar surroundings is a key mission for the EU.
   
• However, the difference between the quality of life and the quality of opportunity available in the municipal centres of most EU countries and those available in regional areas is stark. It is what is driving people from small towns and villages into cities.
   
• Not only does this exacerbate already serious social problems such as housing shortages in the cities, but it also leads to the desertion of small towns and villages.

This mission has the goal of upgrading small and medium-sized towns by:

1. Developing local economic policy, for instance by improving broadband networks and transport links for people and goods, as well as offering greater educational opportunities.
    
2. Increasing the supply of decent, affordable housing, which is likely to attract people back from the major conurbations. This can be done through state housing policy, as well as cooperatives and by promoting public-interest-orientated property development.
    
3. Diverting cultural funding away from the metropolitan centres to fund community centres that can serve as focal points for local cultural programmes and activities, and where improved digitalisation would mean that cultural events could be streamed live from the big cities.
    
4. Addressing the democratic deficiencies often felt in small and medium-sized towns by creating national networks of these towns and villages, by setting up joint citizens’ assemblies between regional and municipal administrations to address the concerns of commuters who are often served by neither, and by working to consult those groups usually hard to reach such as the young and the newly arrived citizens, so that their contributions can be heard.