David and Goliath of EU Urban Agenda: Taking Stock of EU Local Implementation

Housing 72% of all Europeans, local governments are important actors in stimulating growth, innovation, and climate change solutions. The aim of EU Urban Agenda adopted in 2016 is to improve the performance of existing policies and increase the effectiveness of new measures. Understanding the interaction between local government and the EU is important so as to find strategic ways of improving EU policy implementation. However, our current understanding is limited across the academic community. This paper assesses the nature of hurdles that local governments face when implementing EU policies. It tries to explain these empirical puzzles with the state of art research on local EU implementation. Converging empirics and current understanding of the EU-local government interaction isolates research gaps and avenues for future research. So far, EU implementation scholars have mostly focused on the absorption of EU funds and organizational adaptation by local governments. Less attention has been paid to the practices of local governments when implementing often contradicting EU policies on the ground. This lack of attention is in stark contrast to the implementation challenges local governments face when trying to integrate strongly sectoral EU policies goals on the ground. Thus there is limited understanding of the performance of existing policies and their effectiveness at local level. The number of policy sectors addressed in this literature is also limited, as is the number of the most studied national contexts.