The road to Europe: main street or backward alley for local governments in Europe?

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1 The road to Europe: main street or backward alley for local governments in Europe? 29 AND 30 APRIL 2010 HET PAND, ONDERBERGEN 1, GHENT, The Centre for Local Politics (Department of Political Sciences) of Ghent University is pleased to invite you to the International Conference on the Europeanisation of local government. TOPIC The European integration process can undoubtedly be considered as one of the main political developments of the past decades. This development was characterized by different treaty changes that led to a growing cooperation between the Member States at both economic and political level (deepening) on the one hand, and successive accessions of new Member States (enlargement) on the other. For this reason, it is commonly assumed that membership of the European Union has Europeanised many - if not all - aspects of national political life. Also local authorities are confronted with the growing European dimension of their village streets. More in particular, the EU for example impacts on local government as a result of the regulations and directives it produces in order to secure the implementation of its programs and policies.

2 This growing importance of Europe on local government leads us to the following question: how does Europe impact on the behaviour of lower tier governments? In other words, how and to what extent do local governments react to this Europeanisation? So far, Europeanisation studies at the local level mainly focused on a top-down approach, defining Europeanisation as the implementation of EU legislation or as meeting the criteria for receiving money from the EU structural funds. That is to say, Europeanisation as input from the EU to local governments. There are however also indications that local governments have developed from passive policy-takers to active policy-makers in the European multi-level context. Local authorities for example have started to by-pass national or regional governments and tried to gain direct access to European institutions to defend their interests. They also became more and more active in all sorts of networks and partnerships to facilitate best practice transfer, which can also be considered as an important aspect of local (horizontal) Europeanisation. The general purpose of this conference is to get a better insight on the so called bottom-up aspect of Europeanisation (output from local governments to the EU). PROGRAM Thursday 29 April 2010 (Zaal Rector Blancquaert) Introduction 13h30-14h00 14h00-14h10 Registration Welcome & introduction to the conference Herwig Reynaert, Centre for Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium 14h10-14h30 The impact of Europe on local government: Towards bottom-up Europeanisation? Eline Van Bever, Centre for Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium

3 14h30-15h00 The Europeanisation of local government: Twenty years later Mike Goldsmith, Emeritus Professor, University of Salford and Visiting Professorial Fellow, De Montfort University, UK 15h00-15h30 Coffee break Session 1: Local government in the EU multi-level system Chair: Stéphane Guérard, University of Lille, France 15h30-15h50 Swedish local government in multi-level governance Stig Montin, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Örebro University, Sweden 15h50 16h10 Local government in the Council of Europe: Implications for the European Union Jing Pan, Local Governance Research Unit, De Montfort University, UK 16h10 16h30 The implications of the accession to the EU for Polish regions Pawel Swianiewicz and Marta Lackowska, University of Warsaw, Poland 16h30 17h00 Questions and discussion Welcome at the city hall of Ghent 17h30 18h00 The Europeanisation of Local Government: The experience of Ghent Daniël Termont, Mayor of the City of Ghent, Belgium 18h00 19h00 Reception hosted by the city of Ghent

4 Friday 30 April 2010 (Zaal Rector Blancquaert) 09h30-09h40 Welcome Kristof Steyvers, Centre for Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium 09h40 10h10 Europe: Just another addition to an already complicated context? Linze Schaap, Tilburg University, The Netherlands Session 2: Europeanisation of local government: a bottom-up approach Chair: Everhard Holtmann, Martin Luther University Halle - Wittenberg, Germany 10h10-10h30 Resisting Europeanisation? Conflicts and Changes in Urban Governance in Vienna Alexander Hamedinger, Vienna University of Technology, Austria 10h30 10h50 From the reticular Europe to the contiguous Union. A case study of Europeanisation processes in the urban sphere beyond the state 10h50 11h20 Coffee break Christian Lamour, researcher at CEPS/INSTEAD, Luxembourg 11h20 11h40 A Fusion perspective on European Integration Processes at the Local level Marius Guderjan, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

5 11h40 12h00 Fusing Regions? Sustainable Regional Action and European Integration Lee Miles and Magnus Lindh, Karlstad University, Sweden 12h00 12h30 Questions and discussion Lunch 12h30 13h30 Sandwich lunch at Het Pand Session 3: Territorial cooperation in Europe Chair: Kristof Steyvers, Centre for Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium 13h30 13h50 A multi-level governance analysis of urban foreign policy. The role of the EU in city-to-city cooperation Nico van der Heiden, Centre for Democracy Aarau, University of Zurich, Switserland 13h50 14h10 The Europeanisation of the Local Government in the EU Multilevel Governance System: The City Networking Paradigm and the Greek Case Antonios Karvounis, Ministry of Interior, Decentralisation and E-Government, Hellenic Republic 14h10 14h30 Questions and discussion

6 Session 4: Local level Europeanisation in practice Chair: Koenraad Marchand, VUB, Brussels, Belgium 14h30 14h50 Bruges: a modern European city? Steve Philips, European Project Manager, Bruges, Belgium 14h50 15h10 The German local level as an actor in European lobbying. involvement and impact of the German local level in the European policy-making process Sonja Witte, German Association of Local Utilities, Germany 15h10 15h30 Local governments in the drafting phase of EU decision making. How the Liaison Agency Flanders-Europe supports Flemish cities. 15h30 16h00 Questions and discussion Joke Hofmans, Liaison Agency Flanders Europe, Belgium Reception 16h00 17h00 Reception offered by the organizing team

7 PRACTICAL INFORMATION Conference venue Het Pand Onderbergen Gent (for directions) Registration Registration can be made by filling in the registration card attached to this announcement. Please send back the registration card by , fax or post before 20 April to: Vanden Broele Editions Stationslaan Bruges Tel.: Fax: formations@vandenbroele.be The following types of registration are possible: 1. Subscribes to the conference (coffee breaks, sandwich lunch and reception included) and receives the conference book [175 euros] 2. Subscribes to the conference book only [45 euros] Please wait for the invoice for payment. Prices include VAT. For any additional information concerning this conference, please contact a member of the organization committee of the conference: Herwig Reynaert, Kristof Steyvers and Eline Van Bever

8 Prof. Dr. Herwig Reynaert Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Centre for Local Politics Department of Political Science Universiteitstraat Ghent herwig.reynaert@ugent.be Prof. Dr. Kristof Steyvers Centre for Local Politics Department of Political Science Universiteitstraat Ghent kristof.steyvers@ugent.be Eline Van Bever Centre for Local Politics Department of Political Science Universiteitstraat Ghent eline.vanbever@ugent.be SPONSORS This conference is organized with the aid of: Uitgeverij Van den Broele Vlaams Agentschap voor Binnenlands Bestuur Universiteit Gent

9 REGISTRATION CARD Please fill out in capital letters. Organisation:... First Name:... Last Name:... Address:... ZIP:... City:... State:... Country:... Telephone:... Fax: I would like to: attend the conference in Ghent (29th and 30th April 2010) and receive the conference book for 175 euros order the conference book for 45 euros Please wait for the invoice in order to pay the amount due. These prices include VAT. Date Signature