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On 15 October 2025, the European Parliament welcomed a distinguished gathering of city leaders, EU officials, and international experts for “City Diplomacy: The Strategic Role of European Cities in International Relations,” an event that marked a pivotal moment in recognizing cities as essential actors in global affairs.

This European Week of Regions and Cities event was piloted by the City Diplomacy Lab in partnership with Eurocities, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), PLATFORMA, the International Association of Francophone Mayors (AIMF), and the Global Parliament of Mayors. It marked the third stage of the City Diplomacy series that began a month earlier at the French Senate and continued at the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

A Vision of Interdependence

Opening the proceedings, MEP Leoluca Orlando, former Mayor of Palermo and Member of the City Diplomacy Lab Scientific Committee, delivered a powerful reflection on the evolution from independence to interdependence in international relations. Drawing on his friendship with the late Professor Benjamin Barber and their joint founding of the Global Parliament of Mayors, Orlando emphasized the unique freedom that mayors possess in international relations.

“Before the Second World War, there was only an alternative: independent or colonial. There was no third possibility,” Orlando explained, tracing how the post-war creation of human rights established interdependence as a foundational principle. He recalled organizing the Interdependence Day initiative in Philadelphia on July 4, 2002—in the symbolic home of American independence—to promote interdependence as a response to the post-9/11 return to sovereignty-based thinking.

Orlando emphasized that mayors, unburdened by armies or monetary policies, enjoy a freedom that national leaders often lack. “If a mayor should be elected Prime Minister, he probably would not be able to speak as he spoke when he was mayor. The same person, the same idea, the same vision.” He shared how this freedom allowed him in Palermo to use municipal competencies—granting telegraphic residence certificates—to provide legal status to migrants, enabling them to work legally, pay taxes, and contribute to security.

Dr. Lorenzo Kihlgren Grandi, Founding Director of the City Diplomacy Lab, provided essential context for understanding both the historical significance and current urgency of the gathering. He traced the origins of city diplomacy to Europe over a century ago, emphasizing how European cities shaped its methodological frameworks and created the cooperative networks that now enable urban voices to be heard globally.

He underscored that European cities’ political autonomy—a principle championed by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities—remains their greatest strength. This autonomy, combined with shared European values of human rights, democracy, and rule of law, has enabled cities to become authentic international actors. Yet this same autonomy may create an unbalanced relationship when the partnership with a city in an authoritarian regime is manipulated by its government—what he termed “proxy foreign policy” rather than authentic city diplomacy. He outlined several concerning trends: the illicit acquisition of intellectual property, the use of strategic urban investments as a tool for local political interference, the surveillance of diaspora communities, the spread of disinformation, and the marginalization of democratic voices in certain global city networks where non-democratic regimes wield disproportionate influence.

Drawing on the City Diplomacy Lab’s recent policy brief Cities at the Crossroads, Kihlgren Grandi emphasized that the solution lies not in refraining from city diplomacy, but rather in strengthening it through multilevel, multi-stakeholder cooperation. “This is why it’s particularly important and valuable to have a variety of voices gathered here at the European Parliament,” he explained. “City leaders, experts, EU representatives, discussing how this collaboration can take shape—not as an abstract principle, but as concrete practice.”

International Strategic Insights

Marc Cools, President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, underscored how city diplomacy often produces results where national diplomacy stalls. He cited concrete examples, from facilitating municipal elections in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to visiting imprisoned mayors in Turkey, demonstrating the Congress’s commitment to defending democratic local governance across Europe. “As local representatives, we are not the representatives of our country,” Cools observed. “And therefore, as Mr. Orlando says, we are freer. We have much greater freedom of action.”

The Congress, with its 600 members, encourages and supports city diplomacy, including platforms such as the Cities4Cities initiative set up to help Ukrainian cities. Cools also described ongoing efforts to organize informal meetings between Turkish and Greek Cypriot local elected representatives and projects bringing together young people from both sides of Cyprus to create dialogue.

Paul Costello of GMF Cities , brought a transatlantic perspective. “We see growing interest in city diplomacy — both in Europe and North America,” he noted. “But this engagement needs to be matched by greater resources and coordination.” He explained that GMF Cities’ work with mayors and city networks — particularly through its City Directors of International Affairs Network — shows that local actors are “often the first to feel the effects of global crises, and the first to respond collectively.” He emphasized the critical importance of subsidiarity in city diplomacy and highlighted cities’ unique legitimacy on democracy issues, given that local government remains the most trusted level across Europe.

He highlighted several recent bottom-up initiatives: the Timișoara City Summit bringing together EU and accession country mayors, the Baltic capital cities’ MOU on civic defense and resilience, and the US-German mayors meeting in Bremen supported by the German Foreign Ministry. However, Costello cautioned that increased national government interest in city diplomacy remains “very ad hoc” and risks duplication without better coordination within an EU framework. Critically, he emphasized that activity cannot increase without also increasing resources in municipal government: “There’s a lot of great networks popping up, a lot of great initiatives, but that is putting more demands on local government at a time when budgets are shrinking.”

Ika Trijsburg, representing the Municipal Association of Victoria and the Australian National University, offered a compelling case study of cities responding to disinformation—a challenge she described as “locally experienced but globally connected.” Her work on the world’s first Disinformation in the City Response Playbook demonstrated how city diplomacy enables rapid knowledge transfer and provides a “collective heat shield” when individual cities face politically challenging responses to coordinated disinformation campaigns.

Trijsburg outlined how disinformation impacts cities through multiple vectors: targeting individual leaders, corrupting policy-making processes, dividing communities, and serving as a tool of foreign interference. She cited examples from Swedish cities experiencing sustained campaigns, Iranian-backed astroturfing in Australia, and the contagion effect of the 5G tower attacks across Europe. “When we’re dealing with great power imbalances,” she noted, “the collective efficacy of cities being able to engage in timely international conversations means that city diplomacy in action has become a real asset that increasingly national governments and supranational entities are taking note of.”

Mayors at the Frontline

The Mayors’ Roundtable brought the conversation firmly into the realm of practice. Professor Alessandro Ghinelli, Mayor of Arezzo, articulated a sophisticated framework positioning cities as “points of materialization” where international crises—whether economic shocks, climate emergencies, or migration flows—become tangible realities requiring immediate response. He described how Arezzo’s gold and jewelry artisan sector, deeply integrated into global supply chains, feels immediate impacts from sanctions and trade disruptions, necessitating “targeted micro-level economic diplomacy.”

Ghinelli proposed establishing a European Municipal Diplomacy Hub (EMDH) to serve three critical functions: coordination between cities, national governments, and the EU; consolidation and dissemination of real-time threat intelligence; and crisis support with pre-agreed mechanisms for intervention. He also called for a European City Diplomacy Academy to provide geopolitical literacy and resilience training, “effectively transforming the original resilience toolkit into a living educational program.”

“We can no longer be seen as mere implementers,” Ghinelli declared. “We must be seen as co-creators of policy.” He emphasized the need for formal recognition of cities as crucial partners in executing and formulating international agreements, with dedicated funding streams and official channels. “City diplomacy is inherently democratic and proximity-based. Our engagement is visible, tangible, and close to citizens, forging a level of trust that high-level traditional diplomacy often struggles to achieve.”

Clare Hart, Vice-President of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole, offered a Mediterranean perspective, emphasizing mayors’ frontline role in crises and the practical significance of city-to-city diplomacy. She stressed that cities are often the first responders to crises and highlighted the importance of sharing best practices across municipalities.

Hart illustrated Montpellier’s international partnerships, particularly with Morocco and Algeria, noting how these exchanges preserve dialogue even when national diplomacy falters: “When national diplomacy breaks down, city-to-city diplomacy keeps the bridges open, keeps the dialogue flowing. Our cities maintain friendships and cooperation that allow faster and more effective responses when things return to normal at the national level.”

She also emphasized the role of cities in advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals: “the 17 SDGs are only attainable if cities are fully on board—accounting for about 75% of their implementation.” Finally, Hart reinforced that city diplomacy is deeply interdependent with national, European, and global frameworks: “We are all on the same planet, in the same boat, and our survival depends on interdependence. The future is city diplomacy, hand in hand with national and European diplomacy, and with our UN partners. It is absolutely central and essential.”

Anna Lisa Boni, Deputy Mayor of Bologna, shared her city’s pioneering approach of approving a formal Strategic Plan for European Affairs and International Relations—the first of its kind in Italy. This plan, she explained, transforms international relations from an optional “cherry on the cake” to a structural dimension of city governance. “When you have many departments going where they want, sometimes you learn that the Department of Health has made an agreement with China, and you don’t even know,” she noted, emphasizing the need for coordinated, strategic frameworks.

Boni reflected on the historical significance of city networks, warmly recalling her work with Professor Orlando in creating initiatives like the Covenant of Mayors. She stressed that while technical capacity and funding matter, what distinguishes effective city diplomacy is political leadership. Cities serve as both stages for global challenges and sources of solutions—from the Shelter Cities network during the 2015 migration crisis to delegations of mayors defending imprisoned colleagues in Turkey.

“It’s important that national governments recognize that they need to help local governments equip themselves with this capacity to be strategic and at the same time concrete,” she argued. “Then it becomes a real collaboration to navigate these very controversial and difficult times. The more you practice, the more you exchange, the more you create a critical mass of people that want to do these things in a good way, the more we will also benefit ourselves.”

Mervi Heinaro, Deputy Mayor of Espoo, Finland, provided concrete examples of how a technologically advanced city navigates sensitive relationships. Despite being Finland’s second-largest city with 325,000 citizens, Espoo ranks sixth in Europe for patents filed, with technological leadership in quantum computing, AI, space, and 5G/6G connectivity—technologies critical to European sovereignty but also of intense interest to other powers.

Heinaro described Espoo’s 27-year sister city partnership with Shanghai, which began helping Finnish companies like Nokia and Kone open doors but has evolved in the changed geopolitical context. “We may say that we have even better possibilities of opening the doors to Shanghai than the Minister for Foreign Affairs,” she observed, while emphasizing close coordination with Finland’s Foreign Ministry. The relationship now focuses on “fairly safe topics” like sustainability, urban clean tech, and youth, but requires constant diplomatic awareness—exemplified by carefully managing which ambassadors can visit quantum computing facilities during Innovation Days.

Espoo’s work also extends to supporting Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine (President Zelenskyy’s hometown) on educational curriculum, and facilitating Finnish companies’ entry into South Korea—where city-level MOUs helped IQM, which has sold more quantum computers than IBM, make its first sale to South Korea. “That’s the value of cities,” Heinaro concluded. “We can take themes that are not always that sensitive, but we can still keep on the discussion and help our other players and even the government and EU.”

The EU Dimension: Institutional Perspectives and Responses

The event’s final session brought together European institutional voices to address how the EU can better support and coordinate with city diplomacy.

Lars Gronvald, Head of Section for Urban Development at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA), provided a comprehensive overview of how cities are central to the EU’s Global Gateway strategy. With over €150 million already invested in city-to-city partnerships through completed programs, and with cities representing the connection points for major infrastructure investments in transport, energy, and digital connectivity, Gronvald emphasized that “we are supporting cities through many avenues.”

He explained that Global Gateway’s focus on mobilizing over €300 billion for infrastructure investment inherently centers on cities: “With this connectivity, we don’t build corridors—we do that to connect productive areas, connect economic density, and that means we’re connecting cities. All this work on transport and energy and connection ends up being meaningful only if there are productive cities, inclusive cities, sustainable cities.”

Gronvald highlighted multiple support mechanisms: the completed city-to-city partnership program, the ongoing International Urban and Regional Cooperation (IURC) program, support for city networks to enhance their capacity, and initiatives like the Covenant of Mayors for Sub-Saharan Africa that bring European expertise through organizations like Expertise France, GIZ, and ICEI. He particularly emphasized the concept of “Team Europe” within Global Gateway—bringing European values on environmental sustainability, human rights, inclusiveness, and accessibility to major projects.

Welcoming the notion of “Team Cities” as a complement to Team Europe and Team National approaches, Gronvald explained how cities can serve as entry points to partner countries, bringing solutions and potentially European companies. He announced plans for a cities and regions conference during the forthcoming EU-Africa Summit in Brussels, bringing together European cities and African partners to discuss the future of city-to-city cooperation.

Carmine Pacente, Member of the European Committee of the Regions and President of the Committee on European Affairs and International Relations at the Milan City Council, emphasized the institutional dimension of city cooperation, stressing the need for stronger institutional recognition to ensure cities can act effectively within the EU framework. His intervention highlighted the delicate balance between expanding city diplomatic capacity and preserving the institutional frameworks that make it effective. Pacente also raised a note of concern about recent proposals in Brussels that risk reducing institutional powers for city diplomacy: “This morning all the European groups—the socialists, the popular, the greens, the left—voted against this proposal because we need to increase our power, but we risk reducing our institutional powers for city diplomacy. Without this power, we risk not having institutional tools in the decision-making process. This is a very big risk today and tomorrow, more than yesterday.”

Pietro Reviglio of Eurocities emphasized the need to extend the recognition cities have achieved in EU governance to the realm of international affairs. He noted that while the EU Agenda for Cities demonstrates progress, there remains a significant opportunity to ensure better alignment with the European External Action Service and to guarantee that cities can fully benefit from programs like IURC.

Reviglio outlined Eurocities’ three-pronged approach: building relationships with actors like the City Diplomacy Lab to create awareness and evidence of city diplomacy’s value; working with members to build capacity so that not just pioneers but all cities can engage effectively; and advocacy at the European level to ensure recognition of city diplomacy. “There is a huge opportunity for the European Union to actually bring to the service of the Union all these networks, all these relationships that cities already have,” he noted, emphasizing the importance of alignment rather than competition with EU external action.

Responding to Mayor Ghinelli’s proposals for a European Municipal Diplomacy Hub, Reviglio expressed enthusiasm: “I think it’s going to be very important to discuss even more how we can create this hub for city diplomacy at the European level.” He emphasized that without stories, narrative, and evidence of what cities are doing on the ground, it would be difficult to convince European institutions to engage seriously—making the City Diplomacy Lab’s work crucial.

Sébastien Scutca, International Relations Advisor for the City of Nice, articulated a concern that resonated throughout the room: fragmentation. After acknowledging the remarkable contributions from speakers, he catalogued the proliferation of initiatives—Timișoara City Summit, Baltic countries cooperation, US-German mayors meeting in Bremen, Global Gateway, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Covenant of Mayors, OECD Champion Mayors, Ocean Resilience Coalition, AIMF, ICLEI, UCLG, C40, and numerous others.

“It’s not to show you that everything is fragmented,” Scutca clarified, “but as food for thought—how can we do things together more and more?” Drawing on his experience with the Ocean Rise & Coastal Resilience Coalition, launched at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, he emphasized that technical issues like sea level rise in the Mediterranean can unite mayors from Gaza, Tel Aviv, and Beirut in ways that overtly political topics cannot. Quoting Laurence Tubiana’s observation that “laws of physics do not ignore laws of politics,” he suggested that cities’ pragmatic focus on concrete challenges can transcend ideological divisions.

Boris Tonhauser, Director of PLATFORMA, provided crucial historical context that underscored both the depth and the fragmentation challenge. He traced city international cooperation to the Hanseatic cities of medieval northern Europe, through the 1913 International Exhibition in Ghent that birthed the International Union of Local Authorities, to the 1951 establishment of CEMR—representing over 70 years of structured European municipal cooperation. PLATFORMA itself, founded in 2008, focuses specifically on development cooperation and internationalization of European cities and regions.

Yet Tonhauser also highlighted a troubling reality: “We represent around 100,000 local governments in Europe—that is a force that should be reckoned with and a potential we can still develop.” Despite this massive constituency, cities face systematic exclusion from key funding instruments. He pointed to the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDCI) and its successor, the proposed Global Europe instrument, where support for city diplomacy and international cooperation remains “very much unsystematic.”

“We very much hope that in the future financial framework, if you look at the proposal for the Global Europe instrument, it would be wonderful to see a dedicated instrument to support city diplomacy,” Tonhauser urged. He called directly on the European Parliament to modify the NDCI/Global Europe instrument to include dedicated financing, noting PLATFORMA’s engagement with the Policy Forum on Development where cities participate alongside civil society but lack sustained, institutionalized support.

Benedek Jávor, Head of the Representation of Budapest to the EU, raised the urgent question of how cities can cooperate to defend democracy when they increasingly find themselves as “islands” of liberal democratic values within countries experiencing democratic backsliding. Drawing on Budapest’s experience over the past six years as what he termed “an ark for European values” in Hungary, Jávor emphasized that city cooperation on democracy has become systemically important.

“For a long time, it was regarded as a specific Hungarian issue,” he observed, “but I think we are at a point that this is becoming systemic.” “Cities should cooperate not only to protect and defend themselves against these attempts from national governments, but also because they can contribute to maintaining democracy in their country,” Jávor argued.

Deputy Mayor Boni responded that the increasing number of cities finding themselves in such situations requires collective action: “Everything is so interconnected. International relations is just one element of the different dimensions in which cities can be involved and cooperate and be useful. We need to continue and reinforce these kinds of discussions, spaces for conversations with all the actors that are active.”

Deputy Mayor Heinaro added a preventive perspective: “Cities have a big role to play because participation on different levels—whether in your own neighborhood, your own sports club, something you do as a hobby—gives you an ownership of the city. When you have ownership and you belong somewhere, you are less eager to accept disinformation. When your local education is at a sufficient level, there’s work, there’s hope for the youth, then you are less prone to go along with populist and disinformation policies. We need to make sure our youth have a good education, therefore hope, therefore less prone to this kind of thing.”

A Call to Action

MEP Orlando responded to the discussion with a powerful proposal: convening European city networks—including Budapest’s Mayor Gergely Karácsony, whom he has hosted several times in the European Parliament—to establish common guidelines on peace and democracy. “This is an act of diplomacy,” he declared, receiving the City Diplomacy Lab’s immediate commitment to prioritize this initiative.

He also reflected on the Mediterranean as “a continent of water, letting different cities all around the Mediterranean feel, to be Mediterranean—and then European or African or Asian, depending on the single city.” Drawing parallels to Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms speech and the vision of Schuman, De Gasperi, and Adenauer in abolishing borders after World War II, Orlando emphasized: “The network of cities is a concrete act of diplomacy. The network of cities is a concrete act of interdependence. The problem is how we can interrelate it with the nations, the European Union, and national governments. This network can let single cities be stronger—a stronger interlocutor with the European Union and with single member states.”

Before leaving, he couldn’t resist observing that “mayors normally have two enemies: the region and the members of the council”—drawing laughter and agreement from his fellow mayors—before concluding: “The future of peace, the future of respect for the environment, a future of respect for social needs, starts from the cities.”

Mayor Ghinelli responded by emphasizing the need to formalize city voices within existing structures: “In Italy there are 8,000 municipalities—too many to be handled individually. So if there is an organization that gathers all of them and takes part in Urban7 or Urban20 decisions, it’s a first step, a very important one. We need to make a recognized role for Urban7 and Urban20 as already existing networks that can truly sit at the table where decisions are taken.”

Synthesis and Vision

In his closing remarks, Dr. Kihlgren Grandi synthesized the day’s rich discussion around several core themes that characterize contemporary European city diplomacy. He identified cities as concrete symbols of interdependence—using Professor Orlando’s term—and as builders of bridges across partisan, geographic, and political divides. This bridge-building capacity, he noted, stems from cities’ inherently cooperative nature and their participatory democratic practices that touch the roots of democracy itself.

The question is not whether cities engage in diplomacy, but whether European and global institutions will provide the frameworks to harness this engagement strategically, democratically, and effectively. Indeed, cities are not exempt from crises and challenges, requiring enhanced resilience through cooperation and coordination with multiple levels of government. “Throughout the event, the specific added value of cities has been discussed,” Kihlgren Grandi reflected, “and using the words of Mayor Ghinelli: not just to implement, but also to co-create. Strengthening city diplomacy means strengthening EU diplomacy.”

He acknowledged both challenges and opportunities in this multilevel dialogue. From Ghinelli’s proposed European Municipal Diplomacy Hub and City Diplomacy Academy, to Tonhauser’s call for dedicated financing within the Global Europe instrument, to Jávor’s emphasis on systematic cooperation to defend democracy, the path forward demands both political will and structural reform. Fortunately, there is growing recognition—exemplified by DG INTPA’s engagement—of cities as essential connectors. The vision articulated involves not a single channel but multiple avenues of support, recognizing cities’ connecting power and providing the institutional and knowledge frameworks to sustain it and navigate the challenging geopolitical landscape

This dialogue at the European Parliament demonstrated that this evolution is not merely aspirational—it reflects the lived reality of cities on the frontlines of global challenges, and the growing recognition that multilevel cooperation centered on democratic values represents Europe’s strategic advantage in an increasingly fragmented world.

Kihlgren Grandi announced that these discussions will directly inform the upcoming Urban7 Summit during France’s G7 Presidency in spring 2026, where the City Diplomacy Lab will lead the scientific coordination. Developed in partnership with the Global Parliament of Mayors, ICLEI, and France Urbaine, the summit represents the next milestone in enhancing democratic cities’ strategic role in international relations.

Published on September 1, 2025. Last updated on November 3, 2025.