S-Tiles - law corner

LAW CORNER

As already said, until the 1992 Rio’s Earth Summit and the adoption of AGENDA 21, local authorities had little input into the international environmental policy process. In 1994, European local authorities, as one of the first major groups, signed the Aalborg Charter and committed themselves to implementing Local Agenda 21 (LA21) thus applying the principles of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

The SUSTAINABLE CITIES PROGRAMME (SCP) and the LA21 have contributed to the UN-Habitat’s goals of sustainable urban development and good governance. The move ‘from Charter to Action’ was achieved through the LISBON ACTION PLAN set up at the SECOND EUROPEAN SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND TOWNS CONFERENCE in 1996.

In May 1997, the European Commission adopted the Communication “TOWARDS AN URBAN AGENDA IN THE EUROPEAN UNION” launching a wide discussion on urban development policies and stimulating a great deal of interest from the European Union institutions. To follow-up and reflect this discussion, the Commission presented a EUROPEAN UNION FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION FOR SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT which aimed at better co-ordinated and targeted community action for urban problems.

This led the European Commission (DG Environment) to propose in 1999 a “COMMUNITY FRAMEWORK FOR COOPERATION TO PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT” [COM (1999) 557]. This framework now provides a potential source of funding for local authority network activities (93% for the present two year work programme of the campaign - November 2001to November 2003).