Downscaling Strategic EU Policy Directions in Mediterranean Cities: Participatory Assessment of Critical Issues and Barriers

The future of the European Union (EU) is today drafted by the 2050 climate-neutral vision, as this is expressed by the European Green Deal (EGD), i.e. a strategy/investment package for climate/environmental action, economic growth/jobs, and social inclusion; and a policy direction, displaying a strong focus on people/communities and providing incentives for impact-minded partnerships across sectors/geographies. In support of the EGD’s priorities, the Mission on “Climate-neutral and Smart Cities” is deemed to accomplish a deep and systemic transformation of European cities and bring on board concrete solutions to contemporary challenges. 100 EU cities are, at first, taking over as vivid laboratories for achieving climate-neutrality by 2030 and steering efforts of all European cities towards the 2050 vision. The focus of this paper is on stimulating a dialogue among the scientific, policy making and practitioners’ communities on the above strategic policy directions; and exploring key issues as well as barriers applying to the downscaling of the EGD and particularly the Cities’ Mission to the Mediterranean context. Towards this end, a blended participatory methodology is utilized, consisting of: a questionnaire addressed to the aforementioned communities that gathers distributed knowledge as to the key issues and barriers for successfully downscaling EU policy priorities to Mediterranean cities; and a Focus Group exercise, engaging stakeholders of diverse expertise for further delving into critical questionnaire results. Out of this exercise, prevailing barriers seem to be the lack of governance/collaboration and synergies’ creation as well as the distinct structural and behavioural/cultural peculiarities of Mediterranean population.