UBC in Brussels

One of the most important issues taken up in the UBC Strategy is the organisation's presence in Brussels and lobbying towards the European institutions. As the Strategy says, "formulation of integrated development strategies - such as the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region - and UBC's emerging role as the spokesman of the BSR cities open possibilities for us to get the voice of Baltic local authorities heard. However, this requires greater policy formulation capacity and more effective lobbying, especially on national, regional and European levels".

The burden of responsibility lies on the Executive Board, Secretariat, as well as on the Commissions. Also, the effectiveness of the UBC lobbying in Brussels should be re-evaluated.

On 29 July 2011 the enquiry was sent out to all member cities concerning their representation in Brussels.

Almost half of the members responded, out of those 4 reported they have their own Brussels office, namely: Helsinki, Malmö,Tallinn and Turku. The majority of the cities who responded referred to the contacts with either the EU regional representations or the EU offices of the national cities associations, e.g. Tampere Region EU Office, Central Denmark EU Office, West Finland European Office, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanse-Office, North Sweden European Office, Pomorskie Regional EU Office, Latvian Association of Local and Regional Governments in Brussels, EU Office of Association of Local Authorities of Lithuania, and others.

The Union would like to utilize the knowledge and potential of these offices. On 15 February 2012 the UBC Executive Board intends to hold the meeting in Brussels with the cities' EU offices to discuss how to lobby for the benefit of cities from the BSR.