METRO - The role and future perspectives of Cohesion Policy in the planning of Metropolitan Areas and Cities. Policy brief: The added value of the EU cohesion policy in the consolidation of metropolitan governance

The EU cohesion policy has had impacts on territorial development since its first introduction at the end of the 1980s. At the same time, it also played a more or less implicit role in the redefinition of domestic governance dynamics, at the national, regional and local level of implementation. While this impact has been recognised and explored in various researches and studies, the role that the EU cohesion policy had played in enhancing metropolitan governance and cooperation is a still relatively unexplored field. This policy brief focuses on the role of the EU cohesion policy in framing metropolitan governance as well as how metropolitan institution have been using the EU cohesion policy as a means to engage with and coordinate the action of local municipalities, social groups and actors from the business community. It focuses on the impacts and outcomes that the EU cohesion policy has brought at the metropolitan level by exploring a multitude of interconnected issues. The aim is to highlight the heterogeneity of channels, local actions, reactions and adaptation measures that metropolitan bodies activated in order to benefit from the EU cohesion policy implementation, on the one side, and consolidate their role within the national, regional and local framework, on the other side. Pieces of evidence and the deriving policy messages are based on the nine case studies investigated in the framework of the ESPON METRO project, which concerned the metropolitan areas of Barcelona, Brno, Brussels, Florence, Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot, Lisbon, Lyon, Riga and Turin. The main aim is to support planners and policy officers in making well-informed decisions at the EU, national and local levels when it comes to programming and implementation of the EU cohesion policy in the 2021-27 programming period.