twinning programmes ■Poverty reduction
■Funding for small development projects
■Provision of ad hoc technical assistance to southern partner municipality
■Primarily development non-governmental organisa-tions (NGOs)
■ Sector-specific actors depend-ing on the aid project funded (e.g. schools or youth groups)
Subsidy programmes for local citizen projects in the South
■Support to a wide range of
small-scale citizen initiatives ■Development NGOs and organ-ised citizen groups
Financial participation in ongoing international campaigns (e.g. the Millennium Development Goals or the fair trade movement) citizens from the territory
■Sensitising the population
■Broadening support for interna-tional cooperation
■Promoting active forms of global citizenship
■Long-term relations between the societies and citizens of both cities
■Structured exchanges on manag-ing territories
A wide range of public and private actors including civil society groups, universities, hospitals and businesses as well as citizens on both sides of the partnership (depending on the nature of the intervention)
The partnership goes beyond the LA itself and seeks to mobilise all relevant actors from the respective territories — the local private sector, civil society, universities, specialised agen-cies, professional associations, etc.
L i m i t a t i o n s o f d e c e n t r a l i s e d c o o p e r a t i o n a p p r o a c h e s
Four main limitations can often be observed in decentralised cooperation processes.
■ For many European municipalities, it is not easy to create a political and institutional space for meaningful external action as reflected in a solid set of decentralised coopera-tion activities in the South(5). Fierce debates rage as to whether such actions constitute a legitimate core task of the municipality, and there can be significant political opposition to spending public resources on such matters.
■ It is difficult for small municipalities to engage in structured forms of direct decentralised cooperation, especially if the aim is to develop reciprocal and mutually beneficial long-term partnership. Capacity weaknesses may drastically reduce the scope for a meaningful decentralised cooperation approach.
■ The challenge of sustaining decentralised cooperation partnerships is real, as political coalitions may change or budget constraints intervene. In some countries, support from national governments for decentralised cooperation activities tends to be narrowly asso-ciated with traditional aid projects, rather than helping European municipalities engage in the empowerment of LAs and local governance. In short, the foundations of decentralised cooperation partnerships are at best fragile if the whole weight of the process has to be carried by the European municipalities alone. To overcome this challenge, a growing number of European LAs seek to ensure the participation of a wider range of stakeholders from within the territory in decentralised cooperation schemes. This approach may lend more legitimacy to the, improve the quality of the cooperation by drawing on multiple sources of know-how and expertise, and facilitate sustainability through joint ownership and the mobilisation of additional resources.
■ Another problem is the tendency of decentralised cooperation programmes to work in a silo, without much connection with other initiatives of the government or donor agencies in the same territory.
P r o m o t i n g t h e d e v e l o p m e n t a l r o l e o f l o c a l a u t h o r i t i e s a n d s u p p o r t i n g e n d o g e n o u s
p r o c e s s e s o f t e r r i t o r i a l d e v e l o p m e n t w i t h d i r e c t d e c e n t r a l i s e d c o o p e r a t i o n
The core added value of direct decentralised cooperation programmes lies in support to improving the local development management cycle (the TALD building block discussed in Sub-section 10.1). There is abundant evidence that decentralised cooperation has helped put
(5) European municipalities may display an interest in international cooperation, but it is difficult to orient this interest towards support of LAs in developing countries. Rather, their priorities are based in Europe (in par-ticipating in European city networks, primarily for economic purposes), in establishing the city internationally (branding the position of the city’s companies or institutions in the international arena) and in contacts with countries of origin (city partnerships with countries with important migrant populations).
in practice the mandate of LAs as catalysts of local development, and triggered innovations in the way LAs plan and finance their local development strategies and organise themselves to ensure effective implementation.
Yet experience also suggests that European LAs can be an ally of their Southern partners in other key components of a TALD policy. A wide range of direct decentralised cooperation pro-grammes has sought to stimulate active citizenship or the use of public-private partnerships in delivering goods and services to local constituencies. There are also examples of effective support to strengthening the advocacy capacity of LAs/ALAs for more development-friendly decentralisation reforms and functioning systems of intergovernmental cooperation.
The operational challenge for EU delegations in promoting the developmental role of LAs through various instruments is to identify promising decentralised cooperation activities in the territory and seek to join forces with the European LAs. The key task at hand will be to provide incentives for joint action and task division in the pursuit of shared objectives around territorial development. Box 11.6 provides some examples that can be a source of inspiration to EU delegations.
B O X 1 1 . 6 Decentralised cooperation at the service of territorial development dynamics
I
nnovative practices can be found in direct forms of decentralised cooperation:■ The city of Amsterdam has definitively abandoned the modality of twinning for its international cooperation activities. It now engages in horizontal forms of city-to-city cooperation in different continents. The aim of these is to exchange experiences and create an enabling environment for the active involvement of a wide range of private and public agencies on both sides in addressing common concerns linked to developing the territory.
In February 2014, Amsterdam and São Paulo signed a four-year memorandum of understanding to cooperate on eight areas of mutual interest closely connected to sustainable urban (territorial) development.
■ The city of Barcelona was a forerunner in Spain in terms of promoting civic-driven forms of municipal international cooperation covering both actions of solidarity and twinning exchanges. The region of Catalonia soon followed with legislation to reserve 0.7 per cent of its total budget for international cooperation.
Despite the economic crisis, decentralised cooperation was institutionalised at the city level, with a dedicated direction and the involvement of more than 100 technicians on a voluntary basis as well as non-governmental organisations executing agreed priority projects. Barcelona’s cooperation agency has been working in more than 10 cities around the world. A concrete example of municipality-to-municipality
cooperation is occurring in the city of Maputo, Mozambique.
It aims to support the design of a master plan for municipal markets covering various critical dimensions (management of markets, health, hygiene and food safety, etc.) in a broader perspective of local/territorial development.
■ As a global network, the Union of Cities and Local Governments is promoting new forms of South-South decentralised cooperation between LAs in similar contexts.
It fosters so-called triangular cooperation, whereby the South-South partnership is complemented with a third organisation from developed countries (which might be a non-governmental organisation, a university or a foundation) contributing its expertise to nurture the relationship.