Africa, Ukraine and disinformation in CIVEX's spotlight

Members of the Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs (CIVEX) of the European Committee of the Regions on 24 September endorsed an opinion on the EU's cooperation with African regions and cities and discussed cooperation with Ukraine's sub-national governments as well as the growing threat to EU values, including local democracy, posed by disinformation and misinformation. 

The deliberations of the Commission for Citizenship, Governance, Institutional and External Affairs (CIVEX) will support the work of the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, sharpen awareness of the impact of disinformation on the work of sub-national governments, and will inform the EU's planned review of its strategy approach to Africa.

The agenda and recording of the meeting are available here.

Africa

The CIVEX opinion on Africa – entitled 'Regions and Municipalities implementing the EU Strategy with Africa' – calls for the greater involvement of local and regional administrations in the definition of priorities and actions that affect Africa's regions and cities.

The draft opinion, which the commission endorsed unanimously, is scheduled for adoption by the CoR's plenary session in November 2024. The opinion comes at a point when a new European Commission is being formed and six months before a new African Union Commission. EU and African heads of state and government are due to hold their first summit in three years in 2025. The EU remains Africa's largest trading partner, investor, and donor.

The CoR's rapporteur, Guido Milana (IT/RE), member of Olevano Romano Municipal Council, identified energy efficiency, the environment, transport, climate adaptation, and support for civil society as priority areas for cooperation with Africa's sub-national governments. He called for a strengthening of EU delegations' capacity to collaborate with sub-national institutions and an increase in funding for local and regional authorities in Africa. His opinion underlines that 65% of the targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 require the involvement of local and regional authorities to be reached.

Mr Milana said: "Having links between the European system and local systems in Africa will help any kind of process. What is happening in Africa is what happened in Europe at the beginning of the 1960s – a great process of urbanisation, of the concentration of inhabitants in big cities, with the depopulation of peripheral areas. Greater involvement of local and regional administrations in the definition of priorities and actions with a territorial impact is needed." 

Ukraine

Ukraine is facing "probably the hardest winter" since Russia's full-scale invasion because of the shelling of energy infrastructure, Serhii Tereshko, deputy head of the mission of Ukraine to the European Union, told CIVEX members. He urged communities in the EU to consider how they could help, saying that "very local support might be very helpful" and adding that "it is also important" for Ukraine's local and regional politicians "to hear messages of solidarity". 

"City-to-city, region-to-region, community-to-community cooperation for the sake of strengthening Ukrainian resilience in terms of Russian war and preparing for the future reconstruction" was one of three priority areas for sub-national cooperation with the EU, Mr Tereshko said. Another is the involvement of Ukraine in cross-border cooperation programmes, such as the Danube strategy, Interreg and ESPON. A third priority is to secure support to build up the institutional capacity of Ukraine's local and regional administrations,

He praised the work done in all three areas by the European Alliance of Cities and Regions for the Reconstruction of Ukraine, which the CoR co-founded and administers, and by the CoR, which, for example, now serves as a regional office for some Ukrainian regions, cities and territorial associations. He described the CoR's 10-point support package for Ukraine as a "a great… road map to satisfy these priorities of Ukraine on the regional track"

Aleksandra Dulkiewicz (PL/EPP), mayor of Gdańsk and chair of the CoR's Working Group on Ukraine, emphasised the need to increase the number of sub-national peer-to-peer cooperation, saying that "roughly half of hromadas [communities] in Ukraine have no partner in Europe".

Democracy and EU values

Cities around the European Union are reporting that disinformation and hate speech are becoming increasingly significant challenges for them, undermining trust in elected officials, local institutions, and administrations' ability to effectively deliver services to their communities.

Speaking in a debate on democratic challenges facing regions and cities, Simeon Dukić of the Strong Cities Network said that female politicians and local officials are particularly subject to harassment and to doxxing, the publishing of private information for malicious purposes. He added that the impact of global crises – such as the Israel-Gaza conflict, the war in Ukraine, and the climate – is now growing across cities in Europe, with associated disinformation and misinformation campaigns hampering municipal efforts to integrate communities and to hold public debates on local policies.

The CIVEX debate followed elections to the European Parliament in June that were marred by cases of violence and intimidation, as well as by disinformation and misinformation. In the run-up to the elections, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, pledged to create a European Democracy Shield to combat disinformation, building on the Defence of Democracy Package agreed in December 2023 and the Digital Services Act adopted in 2022. In their 'Strategic Agenda, 2024-2029', published in July 2024, EU national leaders pledged "to strengthen our democratic resilience", identifying as one priority "countering attempts at destabilisation, including through disinformation and hate speech".

Patrick Molinoz (FR/PES), the chair of CIVEX and vice-president of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, said: "The strength of our democracy depends on respect for fundamental rights, for European values and on rule of law. I think as local representatives we are very well placed to identify risks and threats and to contribute to the mandate of the incoming European Commission and to the Strategic Agenda of the EU. There are real weaknesses."